


Devil You Know

by marchpanes



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Atlas Rhys, M/M, Manipulation, Slow Burn, post-tftbl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2019-12-26 17:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18287222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchpanes/pseuds/marchpanes
Summary: > are you handsome jack?> no duh.Two years, Rhys thinks, is long enough that it won't becrazyawkward.





	1. Just Compensation

_This isn’t a good idea_ , Rhys thinks, twisted at the waist. He’s bent sideways, awkward in a way that makes his ribs dig into his lungs, wheezing at the ache as he cranes behind the desk to fumble the final cord into the final port. From this angle, he’s feeling blind, and his first guess is right on his third try.

The plug slides into place. He sits back, rubbing at his side, and stares unhappily at what he’s done.

 _This really, really,_ really… _isn’t a good idea._

The words have run a groove in his mind, he’s thought them so many times. Once— two years ago— they were only little whispers; he didn’t even know what _‘this’_ was, and they were easy to laugh off.

Now, the _‘this’_ is louder than the words. He only thinks them out of nervous habit, and preemptive, wincing, brace-for-impact regret. So one day, he can say, “I told myself so, too.”

_Yeah, I know._

He turns on the computer.

—

**> can you read this**

The tech is oldschool. Way, way older-school than anything they even covered in _History of Computing_ _101_ ; just a static-black monitor that turned on from the middle-out with a fizzy _pop_ that made him jump, and then feel foolish, even though no one was there to see it, and his own stupid words, all cautiously impersonal and ill-advised and not even _almost_ hopeful, just clinical— diagnostic!— bright and lonely at the top of the screen, in ugly, white monospace. His cursor blinks down at the bottom, one flash for every two beats of his heart.

It was hard to find parts shitty enough to make this feel even halfway safe enough to do. He’s built his own computers before— back in high school, and he even made some money on the side, doing it for a few classmates— but even cheap parts ten-plus years ago were light-years ahead of this... manila clunker. This thing is a new _antique_. He burgled a museum for the monitor.

Not really. There aren’t… museums, on Pandora, mostly. He just got lucky, and he knew a guy.

The story of Rhys’s survival, so far.

“Stupid,” he says. His voice cracks on the word. When’d his throat go dry? There’s not gonna be— why would there _be_ an answer? He’s gonna turn it off. It’s been too long, he didn’t build it right, thank _god_ there won’t be an answer because this idea was really, _really_ —

**> yeah. i can read.**

“Fuck!” Rhys’s chair skitters backwards when he stands. "Ohhh, god. Okay. Fuck."

He paces in a tight circle, skin fingers twisting against metal ones. It’s the most his office will allow, in that his office is two rusted shipping containers crudely welded together, with a few poor attempts at motivational workplace posters sticky-tacked pathetically to the corrugated walls. His knee bumps into a pile of scrap metal and untouched paperwork, and he jumps.

There’s another message.

**> who is this?**

Rhys doesn’t puke, but it’s a close thing. He bends forward and thinks for a moment, hard as he can, gathering his thoughts into something— intelligent? Something brave? He must’ve thought this through, he’s sure he did, over the years and months and weeks and days, the denying and conceding and planning and building, but whatever _whiff_ of a idea he had was either wholly inadequate to the— the _reality_ of this, or it’s just eluding him now because his brain is a feedback loop of white noise, exploding and imploding with fear and adrenaline, over and over and over again. His fingers shake as he forces them across the keyboard.

**> you need to answer some questions for us first**

It’s braver than he feels, by a factor of infinity, and a bluff that would make his mouth twist at the irony if he had control over his facial muscles.

**> fine. shoot. **  
**> are you handsome jack **   
**> no duh.**

Something pounds against his skull, and Rhys realizes, dully, that it’s his heartbeat— which is crazy, because his heart definitely feels closer to his asshole. A strangled, helpless yelp of a laugh leaves his mouth, and his fingers hover bonelessly over the home row.

Neutral. Neutral is safe. You’re just… some guy. Some bored intern, cataloguing knick knacks in your boss’s junk drawer. _Handsome Jack? Who even is that?_ You don’t know. That’s just the dumb name on the faded little label.

**> what's the last thing you remember **  
**> nah, my turn. **   
**> how long has it been?**

Indignation is a shot in the arm, at least, and it covers up whatever sick, pathetic little curl of excitement he absolutely doesn’t feel at the hint of an intact personality. He climbs back into his chair. “Oh, that’s just— _‘my turn.’_ Seriously? I’m the one calling the, uh… shots, here….” He trails off, interrupting himself to type.

**> since what **   
**> since helios. **   
**> two years**

Rhys answers immediately, and honestly, and he frowns. He debated for days before deciding not to install even a calendar. He doesn’t know why he answers honestly.

**> cool. **   
**> felt longer. **   
**> your turn. **   
**> is that the last thing you remember**

“Say yes,” he demands, a croaky whisper. His eyes are starting to strain.

**> nope.**

“Great.” Wishful thinking. Way too wishful.

**> my turn. **   
**> who is this?**

Rhys hesitates, picking at the peeling paint on the half-busted desk with a metal finger, until he’s hesitated long enough to nearly show his hand no matter what he says.

**> the Atlas corporation **   
**> what the hell?**

 _Good answer, Rhys. Very cute._ If nothing else, it gives him the momentum to barrel forwards, towards the only _actual_ goal of this grotesque miscalculation of a plan—

**> do you still have access to hyperion’s databanks**

His heart pounds. This is it, this is all he needs, and then he can just— he can just turn it off. Take it apart. Put his fist through the monitor.

But he _needs_ this.

**> is that what this is? **   
**> datamining? seriously? **   
**> yes **   
**> do you or don’t you **  
**> you’re kidding. **  
**> you woke me up to help you copy your homework, atlas?**

And as long as Rhys has been building up to this, he is suddenly so, so ready to be finished. Nausea and irritation crash across him in alternating waves, and when the next message comes, he’s already pounding out his answer.

**> you’d better have one hell of an offer if you want me to give up that kind of information. **  
**> ok, how’s this for an offer?? you give us everything we want, and we won’t pull the plug on your entire unit **   
**> i’m sure you’ve poked around already looking for a weak point **   
**> surprise, there isn’t one! **   
**> this machine doesn’t even have an echonet port **   
**> i couldn’t give you access even if i wanted to **   
**> and i don’t **   
**> so yes or no?? and remember that no means immediate termination of your existence **   
**> but say yes and maybe i’ll even throw in pong for your trouble!! **   
**> asshole**

There’s a pause, just long enough that the reality of what Rhys just dared to say catches up to him. He presses a hand to his mouth. “Oh, my god—”

**> lmao. **   
**> okay, atlas.**

 _Overplayed, dumbass. Way, way, way overplayed. You really haven’t done this right._ This— needs to be over. Immediately.

**> so deal?? **   
**> sure. deal. **   
**> oh**  
**> great **   
**> but i want a little extra.**

“Of course you do.” Rhys hears the weariness in his own voice. He doesn’t have the emotional stamina for… this, like he used to. If he ever did. _You didn’t, actually. Absence makes the heart grow dumber!_ The voice in Rhys’s brain— his instinct, maybe? He hopes not, for all the attention he pays it— echoes bitterly, and he shakes his head to shut it up. “Not... helping.”

**> what **   
**> ?? **   
**> talk to me again **   
**> i could use the conversation. **   
**> you probably don’t know it, but it sucks ass in here.**

Rhys... hates himself, sometimes. He’s known that for a while, but he reminds himself now, dragging his flesh hand over his face and staring, bloodshot, at the monitor. He hates himself for the little bud of unease that's blooming open in his chest, like when you pour boiling water on those balled up flowers to make that fancy tea.

“He’s a skag,” he murmurs to himself. “A rabid skag. He’ll bite your face clean off, the second you give him a chance.”

**> we’ll be in touch.**

He turns the monitor off.

—

Several days later— though for Jack, Rhys supposes, it could feel like any length of time— and that’s something Rhys is trying hard _not_ to suppose too much about— what it must feel like, to be stuck alone in a dark, empty room, with no reference for the passage of time— and then Rhys looks at his office, and is even more exasperated by this train of thought—

Several days later, he installs Minesweeper.

**> lol.**   
**> thanks, atlas. **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bear with me, this could be a long one. i haven't written in an age, so please be patient while i get my sea legs back. expect additions to the rating, tags, and characters!
> 
> also, apologies, there was an issue with posting. it's back now!
> 
> love and thanks to [@everkinged](https://twitter.com/everkinged) on twitter (nsfw!), incredible artist and co-parent to this silly little story.


	2. Persistence

The meat of Hyperion was rotten, but that doesn’t mean the bones weren’t sound.

So really, it’s like… carrion. A decomposing corpse, feeding the mushrooms. The chicken carcass you can still make a damn good soup out of.

_And it’s only fair,_ Rhys thinks. He licks his forefinger and flicks through a stack of papers, squinting against the dim light filtering from the single, naked bulb jammed into the wall of his office. _Like, when you think about it._ Hyperion didn’t get blasted into atmosphere by its own bootstraps. This is just Atlas taking back what’s theirs. The circle of life.

And he only needs a _little_ boost.

Some basic framework. Supplier names. HR forms. _Maybe_ one or two mining contracts.

And then he can delete it. Delete _him_.

Whatever.

Rhys looks up, mouth a resigned line. He’s getting pretty tired of this thought process. _All roads lead to Rome, huh._ He hasn’t consciously acknowledged the junk computer since yesterday morning, but he has— _unconsciously_ glanced up every half hour or so. To observe its progress in Minesweeper.

It was bad, at first. And kinda funny to watch. Clumsy and impatient, like… well, like an AI. _Or a person who’s been stuck in a black void for a small eternity. Aggressively excited for stimulation, even for little pixel explosions and frowny failure faces._ Rhys shakes his head, scrubbing at his face. “Okay, seriously— _stop_.”

It’s doing better now, though. Wins about half the time. Gets cagey around the 4’s and 5’s, just like people. At the moment, it’s getting close to winning its— Rhys glances at the tally— eight hundred and ninety-fourth game, and he lets himself get invested.

“There, there, and… nonono, it has to be _there_ ,” Rhys mutters, leaning in and squinting. “You have two flags next to that 1.” He stands. “Wait, you’re gonna—” Boom.

It’s been a long night. One of the only working objects in Rhys’s office is a coffee maker, and he’s been mainlining it to stay awake for… well, he remembers little streaks of daylight when he woke up, so anywhere between 20 and 40 hours? Pandora’s wacky day-night cycle is a complete wash; Helios was basically night all the time, and with the transition, Rhys’s body gave up the ghost on adopting any sort of circadian rhythm. He _does_ have a clock; he just forgets to look at it, sometimes. It’s not like he has appointments.

Anyway. It’s been long enough that his caution is a limp blanket slipping off his shoulders, and since he’s already standing…

**> hello, handsome jack**   
**> do you still have valid mining contracts in hyperion's name?**   
**> ooh, that’s a toughie. **   
**> does pandora still exist? **   
**> my contracts were in perpetuity, genius.**

Still pissy, then. _Maybe I should’ve waited until after a win._

**> yep. pandora still exists.**   
**> well shucks.**   
**> my turn. where'd you get me from? **   
**> still with the turns?**   
**> one of our expeditions found you. you were in a big pile of super gross trash. right under what our scientists THINK was a banana peel.**

It’s petty, but he’s earned it.

**> you looted the wreck, you mean.**   
**> yeah, wouldn't you? **   
**> an opportunity is an opportunity**   
**> obviously. figured that's where you found the deed, anyway.**   
**> very hyperion move. i’m impressed. **   
**> guessing you weren't born atlas.**

Okay, Rhys isn’t into this. This… speculation, thing. It sends a gross little jolt to his stomach. He overcompensates, and then gets annoyed, because he ends up sounding slightly manic.

**> hahaha **   
**> you'd like that, wouldn't you?? **   
**> oh, yeah, cupcake. being virtually dommed by one of my own employees would just be the goddamn cherry on this steaming shit sundae.**

“Wow. You really are in a bad mood.” Rhys raises his eyebrows and takes a sip from his chipped mug. He thinks he deserves a point for cracking Jack’s facade of good humor. _Check._

**> what, minesweeper lost its charm already?**   
**> nahhhh. love it. i’m having the time of my life.**   
**> give me the contracts, jack.**   
**> hey, just wondering**   
**> where's rhys?**

Rhys chokes on his coffee. Okay, so much for his 1 - 0 advantage. The blood rushes to his head so fast his vision tunnels, and he beats a fist against his chest as he splutters. “ _Hell_ no.” He’s not touching that with a ten foot pole. Not even if he wants to. Which he doesn’t!

**> who??**   
**> contracts. NOW.**   
**> inside voice, "atlas."**   
**> let’s be adults here.**

“Ohhh, just— _fuck_ you, Jack.” Rhys’s guts churn with annoyance, with anxiety— _why? you have all the power here, dude, he can’t even_ touch _you—_ but a file appears, uploading its way onto the hard drive.

**> was that so hard? **

Then he minimizes Jack, and it’s easy to forget about him like this. It’s _easy_ to worm him back out from under his skin when he can just let his messages stack up in the background. When he isn’t being held hostage from inside his own brain.

Rhys pores over the mining contracts, squinting as he scrolls. Slowly, the extent of what he’s looking at sinks in, and exhilaration starts swelling up inside him, crowding out the dread; these _are_ in perpetuity.

He scans them in with his ECHO eye. (There are ground rules, now; nothing will leave the computer in a way that isn’t leak-proof and reversible, and nothing will _ever_ come _close_ to touching his head. There are massive firewalls on his neural port, too, just in case. And he designed… something else. An extra layer of protection, for emergencies. _Not that it’ll ever come to that! Haha.)_

The contracts are good. _Very_ good. Ownership and coordinates of the many, many smaller rigs dotting the landscape of the planet, plus the… the Blight, not that Rhys particularly wants to think about that. But, hey, the deed means he can at least look into rehabilitating it, when it feels less overwhelming. Jack even got his hands on Headstone, at some point— _well, yeah. Dahl’s just as good as Atlas, when it comes to stripping for parts_ — not that he’d done anything with it, as far as Rhys can see, besides letting the local color, uh, localize.

This means… a whole lot, if he’s looking at it right.

The excitement— the _potential_ makes him fidgety. Even with the bandits, and the lava, and— well, honestly, he has no idea where to start. But it’s progress! He’s wants to tell Fiona and Sasha; wants to call them up right now, to say _I’ve solved all our problems!_ They can start working for him immediately; no more patient skepticism, no more exasperated, meaningful glances at the interior of his office. And no more implying that he doesn’t have indoor plumbing. They don’t either. Cashflow? Ha, big deal! He has _Eridium mining contracts_ now.

He has… Hyperion’s Eridium mining contracts.

He can’t tell them.

As Rhys gazes at the fineprint, scrolling up and down without really reading, the little voice starts up in his head again. The voice that’s always been there, slicing away at his confidence— but that, since he plugged Jack back in, has gone electric blue and crackles around the edges—

_You just can't keep your nose clean, can you, kiddo?_

_This is how it starts, y’know. Little compromises._

And Rhys snaps, “At least when I make a shitty decision, I _own_ it. Oh— great. And now I'm talking to myself. Oh, that’s just the— the _picture_ of mental health.”

He needs to talk to another person. A real person. And— you know what, fuck it. He _deserves_ to brag about this. He was _resourceful_. Resourcefulness isn’t an exclusively Hyperion— corporate, he means, corporate— trait. Pandorans use it all the time.

He’ll just… make something up, about how he got them. For now.

“Hey, Fiona?” When the call connects, Rhys spins away in his wheelie-chair, facing the wall instead of the computer. “Oh— Sasha. Listen, you’ll never guess what I found under some scrap metal at the crash— what? No, why would I find a— hey, could you— tell her to forget that for a second, okay? This— this is better.”

——

Rhys feels mostly good after the phone call, even despite Sasha's practical, _spoilsport_ trepidation, and his mood lasts him all the way to bed. It's nice hearing a mostly-friendly voice. After sleep, though, his freshly-organized thoughts have turned out to be  _less_ settled. There’s something Jack said that’s just… needling at him.

He lied, earlier. Of course he did! It isn’t easy, and _obviously_ Jack wormed back in.

So Rhys slides into his chair to ask him, all casually:

**> who is rhys to you, anyway? **   
**> an employee? well. ex-employee. not sure Hyperion can afford to have anyone on its payroll anymore! haha**   
**> and before you go trying to pick my brain: you're the one who pleaded for conversation. **   
**> i didn’t plead.**   
**> you kind of did **   
**> i don’t plead.**

Well. Rhys would beg to differ, but that evidence is best left filed away.

**> ok, whatever, fine. **   
**> you gonna answer the question?**   
**> i gotta say, i find it curious that you're curious. **   
**> and pretty interesting that you don't know, considering you're definitely hyperion.**   
**> uh, what?**   
**> and how do you figure that?**

Rhys chews at his lower lip. _Nah, this is a bluff. For sure. He’s bluffing._ When there’s no answer, he continues:

**> guess he was an enemy? you don't seem the type to ask after people you like. **   
**> historically speaking**   
**> lol.**   
**> see, that's what i'm talking about. **   
**> you talk like you got something against me. which, before you say it, i know: narrows it down to just about everyone i ever met.**   
**> but you're after my mining contracts. plus you can read, so you ain't pandoran. **   
**> and any other company wouldn't bother hiding behind a dead one. **

_Okay, maybe not bluffing!_ Rhys scrambles to wrestle away Jack’s momentum.

**> no, no no, hyperion’s the dead one **   
**> and you wer**   
**> atlas, very much alive!**   
**> christ, let me finish**   
**> AND, you were picking through my garbage. **   
**> sooo, QED: hyperion. my best guess is you weren't topside. would explain you not knowing the name of your own president. **   
**> and, yknow, still being alive. **   
**> you a loaderbot, atlas? **   
**> legally you have to tell me.**   
**> wait, president?**   
**> you actually meant that?**   
**> you thought it was a joke? **   
**> that moron's first executive decision was to crash my space station into the fricking surface of the planet, so i'm kinda surprised the veracity of the announcement is being questioned here.**   
**> feels like something you would posthumously retract?**   
**> how am i supposed to retract something posthumously??**   
**> anyway, what's the difference**   
**> you said it yourself. hyperion is dead, long live atlas, etc **   
**> i'm sure you'll do a much better job, pumpkin.**   
**> than who? **   
**> you? **   
**> we intend to. **   
**> have! already.**   
**> ok, can we stop, like, chatting? show me your r&d files on smgs. i want to see the storm upgrades you had pipelined **   
**> or i'll top your minesweeper time.**   
**> ooh, scary.**   
**> top my time and i will.**   
**> oh, that's real cute.**

But Rhys is cracking his knuckles already. He tabs into the game, and— right after his first attempt is sabotaged by furious, scattershot ghost-clicking at the little squares— activates a hard block to keep Jack from interfering.

Rhys’s competitive streak was honed to perfection in the fires of _Words With Friends_ office tournaments. Vaughn has _never_ beaten him in _Yahtzee._ It remains a sore point that Yvette reached stage 4,000 of _Candy Crush_ before he did, but Rhys maintains the invalidity of that record due to the fact that she stole his ECHO account details to buy boosts. He couldn’t afford groceries that week.

It takes a couple tries— warm-ups, totally valid— but he just ekes past Jack's best time.

**> ha, 1:06! who’s the man??**   
**> guns. cmon**   
**> yeah, yeah. whatever. give it a day, i'll be back on top.**

But true to his word, there are the files Atlas needs. Pages of diagrams and calculations overlap under the thick glass of the screen, and now Rhys has at least an idea of how reverse recoil even _applies_ to something like shock damage, which always seemed fairly unfocused in principle. Not that he gets it, exactly; this doesn’t come particularly natural to him.

“Gun stuff,” he says. “Woo.”

He should really just hand this all off to Sasha. In a perfect world, she’d already be on his payroll, and he _could_ , and she would be _genuinely_ enthusiastic to deal with it, and he wouldn’t have to pretend to know if high shock chance is worthwhile if the elemental damage is low.

But he’s still gotta woo her. _I mean, this might do it? A new paint job, some ammo upgrades…_ He wonders if he can get away with saying it’s an early Mercenary’s Day present. Is that too transparent? Maybe she’d prefer the schematics to a prototype. Like a LEGO set. She could probably make something cooler herself.

What the hell, he’ll give her both. Rhys isn’t fucking around here; he _really_ wants her running his Weapons & Ammunition R&D.

Plus, who else can he trust? If not them.

The whole lot: Fiona. Sasha. Vaughn— and the Hyperion weirdos he’s nurturing in the refugee camp of Sun’s Cradle. Even that idiot August, more or less.

Not Jack. Not again. Definitely not again.

Once the shine of his win— getting the gun, but also, weirdly, Minesweeper— wears off, Rhys feels... strange. He spins in his squeaky little computer chair, staring at a fixed point on the ceiling.

It all feels familiar. And that’s bad. Because it’s like muscle memory; the pleasant little hindbrain incentives still make him feel warm inside, like a kicked dog that hasn’t learned a single goddamn thing. _It’s removed enough,_ he thought; it’s different, from when Jack took up physical real estate in his brain. So it’d be all right. But— _non-physically,_ it’s still too close; it’s that same off-balanced relationship, antagonistically jovial. The one that, right under the surface, was just antagonism. And roiling, frothing danger.

_What— you mean when you always had a buddy to talk to?_

_Someone who really got you? All the nooks and crannies of your vicious little mind?_

Well, that just doesn’t bear dwelling on.

——

He gives Jack Tetris.

**> hey. keep giving me what i want and i’ll 1v1 you.**   
**> ooh, gee whiz. i must've been good this year.**   
**> thanks, daddy.**   
**> haha… have fun, kiddo.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rhys’s confusion about gun stats is actually just me playing Borderlands. Write what you know!
> 
> Thank you all for the lovely feedback. <3


	3. Collaborate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teeny edits to the previous chapter to make some things a bit clearer. Won’t make a habit of it, I promise!
> 
> Okay, let’s get serious.

He hates lying to Sasha. It’s _hard_. There’s only so many “trips to the crash site” he can make before he starts looking suspiciously lucky (after two years of nothing), and Fiona keeps asking him to look for some map while he’s there, and Vaughn keeps asking why he was in the neighborhood and didn’t visit.

And Jack keeps asking him what day it is.

Rhys pounds out an answer one-handed—  **the same as when you asked two hours ago!!** — and turns away from the computer, annoyed.

“Wait, are you busy? I heard typing.”

Rhys lifts his prosthetic hand a little higher. The translucent blue projection of Sasha’s face casts a pleasant, cool light into the corners of the rust-dull room. “No! Not at all. Nope.” 

“Uh-huh.” She sounds doubtful, but at least amused about it, through the crackles of the bad connection. “Sooo... you gonna answer my question, then?”

“Oh— uh, yeah? No, I haven’t seen a _‘treasure map_ ’ anywhere. Sorry. Tell her I’ll keep looking. Even though I have no idea what that means.”

There’s a gust of white noise. “No, after that. I asked if you were gonna be at Sun’s Cradle any time soon? We’re on our way there, day after tomorrow. I really wanna get you out of that cave, Rhys. You probably _smell_.”

Rhys scoffs, protesting, “It’s not a cave, it’s _under_ — I do _not_ smell. What?? Sasha, when have I ever _smelled?_ ”

She laughs, explosive with disbelief. “Okay, yeah, you definitely need a shower. See? You can’t even smell yourself anymore. You know we can’t even go _inside_ that nasty office—”

“Okay, stop— lying—”

“I’m just saying! It’ll be good for you. And we miss your dumb ugly face. Well, I do, anyway. Fiona’s kind of preoccupied. Nothing personal.”

Rhys sighs, crossing a leg, ankle on his knee. “She’s not happy about the Eridium contracts.”

“Well, would you be?” She sounds doubtful. “She raises some good points, Rhys.”

“But the money—”

" _But the moneyyy._ ”

“That’s not what my voice sounds like.”

“Just, try to look at it from our perspective, okay? We’ve _never_ seen someone do this right. I’m not saying you can’t pull it off, it’s just….” Sasha pauses. “Look— you know she’s got her own stuff going on, anyway. Just give her a little time to come around, okay? Come to Sun’s Cradle. Bring her something pretty.”

Rhys stretches his metal fingers around the call, and smothers down the reluctant groan in his throat. He draws out the pause, until it’s painfully awkward. “Look, Sasha…”

“So, no.”

“It’s just… it’s not a great time.” He resists the urge to glance over his shoulder at the computer. “I have a lot going on right now.”

“Yeahhh.” Her voice has gone jaded. “And so _suddenly_.”

“I can’t help— look, I _do_ want to see you guys. I just… I can’t. Not right now.” He leans forward in his chair, worrying his lip, feeling guilty. “Fiona. Besides that. Is everything...?”

“She’s fine,” Sasha says.

There’s a long silence.

And then, cutting through his building, wincing shame at disappointing her, she says, quiet and concerned, all things he hates to hear in her voice, “Rhys... are you—”

He waits, without breathing. His heart jumps; his fingers curl tight with tension, mind racing at what she’s going to ask. What he really, really needs her not to ask. He thinks of hanging up. He thinks of what he’ll say— _I had to, I have to, it’s for—_

But she doesn’t finish her question.

Instead, she starts over, sounding spent. “Okay. Look, I’ll leave you alone. But the invitation’s open, yeah?” He hears her ECHO shift, and then a rapid _click-click-click_ , and he realizes she’s turning on the stove. His stomach growls. “And sooner or later, we’re gonna find some gas masks and come _drag_ you out.”

Rhys laughs, a little thin— his nerves frazzled— but with real, grateful warmth. “Yeah. Okay. Deal.”

“By the way… the gun looks great. I owe you one, Atlas.”

At least she’s happy about that.

——

None of this is easy, but Rhys has practice, now, at doing things the hard way.

He knows what he has to do. He knows why he has to do it.

——

**> hey, listen up**   
**> i'm going to upgrade your systems.**   
**> since you've been the barest amount of forthcoming**   
**> barest?**   
**> i gave you everything you asked for, didn't i? **

Jack responds without pausing his Tetris game. It makes Rhys‘s jaw clench. _Show-off_.

**> yeah, like pulling teeth **   
**> anyway, i'm giving you a clock and calendar**   
**> oh, wow. thank you. it's been so difficult juggling all my appointments without one.**   
**> you’re the one who keeps pestering me about the day. **   
**> so what, you don't want one? **   
**> less work for me**   
**> i didn't say that.**   
**> ooh, curious **   
**> let's get started.**

Rhys tabs out of Jack, out of Tetris, and leans forward, arms tensed, hands poised above the home row: work mode. This, he can do from scratch, though it won’t have the longevity of something connected to the ECHOnet. It just needs to be roughly correct; uplink to an atomic clock is overkill.

Fresh code starts materializing, compiling, morphing into something functional, and Rhys wonders what it looks like— feels like— from Jack’s side of the screen. It almost prickles like a gaze on his skin, imagining, _knowing_ that Jack is poring over every line of code as it streams through, from Rhys to him. A little conduit. For one thing, it’s fresh reading material— like being on a long flight and getting so bored you read the instructions on the barf bag. But also, Rhys is sharply aware—

There's idiosyncrasies to how every good programmer codes; favorite ways to document and debug. Rhys doesn’t kid himself into believing Jack ever made a study of his work; he doubts it ever even crossed his desk, on Helios. And afterwards, the sample size was so small as to be irrelevant. But he checks and rechecks, certain to the point of paranoia that he hasn’t accidentally signed anything, or done something equally stupid.

He’s almost certain it’s sterile. Especially when Jack’s first, urgent reaction is:

**> is this date right?**   
**> for crying out loud.**   
**> yes!! **   
**> why do you keep asking??**   
**> no reason.**   
**> convincing**   
**> whatever. now you can just check for yourself**

He leans back. Then, impulsively, leans forward again.

**> hey**   
**> wanna see what i did with your smg blueprints?**   
**> what we did. me and my team. my very robust team**   
**> lol.**   
**> sure. **   
**> hit me.**

Rhys stands, and reaches back to shove a little data drive into the port on the butt-end of the computer. He doesn’t even have to upload; Jack is already sticking his claws in, dragging the data out like a cave monster. He seeps into everything, like a creeping, toxic liquid: expanding to fill the available space.

But the upgrades! The upgrades are _pretty_ cool. He’s proud of them, actually proud, and eager to see Jack’s reaction. It’s an eagerness he doesn’t feel like he has to be ashamed of, so that’s nice. It’s mostly cosmetic shit. Some standard upgrades, some deluxe. And one or two surprises.

**> cool beans, atlas. **   
**> love the paint job. **   
**> red, huh? **   
**> nostalgic.**   
**> got a way to compensate for overheating with the increased mag size?**   
**> um, yeah, actually. we’re working with this polymer that soaks heat up like a sponge**   
**> i thought about limiting the fire rate, but that felt like cutting corners**   
**> electrocaloric shit? **   
**> oh**   
**> yes**   
**> smart cookie.**   
**> we messed around with ferro polymers in r&d.**   
**> never could figure out how to make them cost effective, though.**   
**> what’s your solution?**   
**> uhh**   
**> yeah, kinda what i figured.**   
**> that’s all right. it’s not a bad idea. pretty cool you came up with it.**   
**> the thing is, you can’t make every gun perfect. crappy, cheap weapons are what make the world go round. that's your bread and butter.**  
**> you can build the really sick ones, but you’re not gonna get buyers if they’re stupid expensive to produce. not at a profit, anyway. don’t focus on museum pieces when you’re just getting started.**   
**> you got some good ideas, but we’re gonna have to bone up your business plan, pumpkin.**

Rhys feels chastised; exposed, in his naivete. But more than that, oddly: intrigued.

**> ok**   
**> thanks for the advice.**   
**> don't say i never gave you anything.**   
**> hey**   
**> what’s this “smart bullet” crap?**   
**> oh, that’s**   
**> kind of complicated**   
**> haha**   
**> i came up with it**   
**> basically, the first bullet you fire at a new target acts like… kind of a magnet**   
**> and the rest of your clip follows it. it’s like a tracker, sort of**   
**> a little like reverse recoil, but**   
**> better**

This is what he wanted, really. Not to preen, or boast, exactly, but to bare a little sliver of superiority. Show one card in his hand, and make Jack sweat at what else he might be holding.

**> no no no.**   
**> don’t bullshit me.**   
**> this isn’t engineered from reverse recoil. i would know. **   
**> this is new.**   
**> where the hell did you get this?**   
**> haha**   
**> i guess atlas isn’t copying all its homework, jack**   
**> we have tricks up our own sleeves.**   
**> this isn’t old atlas, either. i’d recognize it.**   
**> ok, whatever, don’t tell me where you got it. but what else can it do?**

Rhys can hear his impatience, the way his words fly up onto the screen to confront him.

**> have you tried applying this tech to other things?**   
**> like what??**   
**> i don’t know, missiles? payloads? **   
**> people?**   
**> uh**   
**> no haha that doesn’t sound very practical**   
**> what’s the range on it? line of sight? **   
**> have you tried long distance?**   
**> could you travel with this?**

Rhys recoils at how fast Jack’s mind moves, and suddenly— though this happens every time, and he hates himself for never being prepared— needs to stop this train of thought before it derails.

**> look **   
**> you don’t even know what you’re looking at, ok? **   
**> this is our thing. **   
**> like ours as in atlas. as in not hyperion.**   
**> not for you.**   
**> do i look like i’m sitting in my office right now? in my space station?**   
**> don’t answer that. i’m not. i’m floating in a cage with your logo on the bars, playing tetris.**   
**> hell, babe**   
**> for all intents and purposes, i’m as atlas as you are now.**   
**> so what’s the deal with this tech, boss?**   
**> spill.**   
**> okay, first of all, i’m not… comfortable with that**   
**> and second**   
**> just**   
**> no!**   
**> i’m putting an end to this conversation **   
**> i’ll tell you later, or something, or never, because it doesn’t concern you, like at all**   
**> you know i'm good for more than filing and livestreaming ancient puzzle games, right?**   
**> i'm kind of, like, a genius. **   
**> pretty wasteful, not using all your resources. **   
**> you know what? you're right. i really should give handsome jack more work to do. **   
**> could he potentially sabotage a project so bad it just explodes and takes out my facilities AND the next town over? **   
**> who cares! he's a genius.**   
**> i trust you about as far as i can throw you. **   
**> that metaphor would work better if you were, y'know, still in the flesh. and not a dinky old set up i found in the trash. **   
**> christ. forgive a guy for a little curiosity, atlas.**   
**> look**   
**> even if you WERE an employee**   
**> it’s not like i’d give you access to all my, like, secret shit**   
**> can we just operate on that model?**   
**> for the sake of avoiding mutually assured destruction**   
**> i’m interested in the business stuff, ok? the stuff you were talking about. i’ll take your advice there. **   
**> let’s set up some kind of, i don’t know**   
**> production plan**   
**> and i’ll work on simplifying the schematics**   
**> like you said**

It feels so weird, treating Jack like an actual… _team member_ , how he suggested. Making compromises. But he had to reign this in. Reign _himself_ in. Be more… diplomatic.

Either way, Jack seems pretty bored now that they’ve stopped talking tech. Small blessings.

**> sure. whatever.**   
**> sounds great.**   
**> meantime, though**   
**> tetris?**

Rhys feels a little guilty, but he has to say it; it’s the same impulse he felt to decline Sasha’s invitation, only reversed; the repulsive end of the magnet. But honestly, _really_ , he does want to work on the SMG— consider Jack’s input, look into production costs on the polymer...

**> uh**   
**> not right now.**   
**> some of us have corporations to run**   
**> ouch. **   
**> always getting so personal, atlas. **   
**> fine. you owe me.**

He flicks the monitor off, like he always does when he’s had too much Jack for the day, and snakes him arm around to pull out the data drive and give it a good stomp.

Rhys has no idea if Jack is actually trying anything sneaky; if all these safeguards are necessary. Smart money’s on yes, obviously, _always_ ; at least poking around the little annex that gets added to his room when Rhys plugs in a pocket of outside data, seeing if there’s anything fun inside. And maybe— Rhys isn’t sure, but he suspects— leaving a little piece of himself behind to be carried out, like a flower spreading pollen. No, not a flower— something parasitic.

Jack wouldn’t know, of course. Probably. Rhys is fairly sure. He’s wondered. Would he… be aware? If Rhys reused a data drive, and part of him were suddenly uploaded elsewhere, spread to propagate? Would he know?

Does he know it never happens?

Rhys is paranoid. The grimy edges of the monitor have accumulated sticky note after sticky note, reminding himself to be vigilant, be vague, be _careful_.

Jack won’t get out.

So Rhys finds a grim satisfaction in twisting his boot heel on the plastic each time, imagining the little bug that might or might not be inside.

——

Rhys lays in his shitty bed, staring up at his bedroom ceiling. He can’t sleep.

This is when it’s hardest. This is why he stays up for thirty hours straight, and blames it on Pandora’s sun. To avoid—

_You’re so careful, now._

The sickening purr in his head.

_But you didn’t stomp the eye, babe. Thinking ahead, even back then?_

“No. What? I didn’t _plan_ this. And it’s not like I have a— ” He cuts himself off, this time. _I do, though, don’t I? I do have a choice._

God— it’s like two against one. He presses his face into his musty pillow and mumbles. “It’s just... groundwork.”

_Groundwork means from the ground up, sweetheart. Editing out all that Hyperion letterhead must be thirsty work, huh?_

“Fuck you. _Fuck_ you. You didn’t start from nothing. You just strangled the right person.”

But Jack had something special; a spark that made Hyperion what it was. Rhys knows that, deep and clear, as well as he knows his left hand from his right. Tassiter didn’t have it. Vasquez didn’t, either, hard as he tried to ape it. And very deep down— and yet everywhere, not deep at all, threaded through every shallow nerve of his body— Rhys isn’t sure he has it, either.

_Hey, you're just talking to yourself. Relax._

As hard as it is… Rhys is doing this for a reason. He has to. He’s going to make the universe _better_. And he’s going to help. Help Sasha. Help _Fiona_. Help all of them.

He can, now.

He just has to do better. To rip out this sick, hopeful curiosity blooming wretchedly in his gut, the seed he swallowed two years ago grown into a creeper, winding up him, choking out his better judgment and resolve. But— it’s so—  

Rhys stands, so suddenly his stomach lurches with the motion. He leaves his tiny bedroom, into his office, past his desk, overflowing with paperwork and used paper coffee cups, and sits in front of Jack's unit.

**> what if i told you a fib. a little white lie.**   
**> maybe i do know what happened to rhys.**

A few blocks fall undirected in Tetris, piling up into an unpleasant mess of gaps. Jack can tell it's late now, too, Rhys realizes; he’s starting to think he fucked himself with that handy little clock.

**> you wanna come clean?**   
**> i won’t be mad, sugar.**

Rhys doesn’t respond, just stares, brow furrowed, squinting through the dark of the room against the light of the CRT monitor.

**> so? **   
**> where is he? **   
**> dead in a ditch?**

Rhys exhales, a one-note, joyless laugh. His brain scrambles around what he’s committing, the rules he’s breaking; indulging, way too much. Himself? Or Jack? Whoever, he shouldn’t be here— giving in, against his better judgment— _what better judgment, cupcake?_ — this won’t help Atlas, or—

**> i just want to know why you even care.**   
**> you haven't asked about anyone else**   
**> it's personal crap. **   
**> doubt you'd find it interesting. **   
**> try me**   
**> because.....**   
**> i loved him. **

The word rides Rhys’s breath out like a wave. “What —“

**> LOL **   
**> kidding.**   
**> did i freak you out?? tell the truth**   
**> god i would PAY to see your face right now.**

The wind’s been knocked out of him. Rhys’s fingers move weakly. Embarrassing. _Too easy_.

**> haha. **   
**> yeah. you got me. **   
**> really? **   
**> send me a pic of your expression right now. **   
**> :O **   
**> oh, lame.**   
**> look, i dunno. **   
**> last person i saw before i got banished to the fricking shadow zone? **   
**> we just got some stuff to hash over. **   
**> unfinished business. closure, all that sappy shit.**   
**> ok **   
**> guess i get it.**

Rhys should stand up. Walk away, go back to bed. He should stop talking now, he has no reason to continue; he didn’t even have a reason to start, and his fingers are typing things that his brain doesn’t tell them to. But he goes on, even with nothing to say, and he doesn’t know _why_ ; this is the one bruise he doesn’t need to press, the one scab he doesn’t need to pick at; it’s honestly, desperately important that he leave this alone if he intends to keep going, and he _has_ to keep going—

**> put the long one in the big corner hole.**   
**> no shit?**   
**> i know how tetris works, nerd. **   
**> stop helping if you’re not gonna play me.**

——

Rhys drinks slowly from his mug of coffee, fingertip worrying at the little chip on the rim. The one that always catches on his lip, when he’s not careful. He’s standing, face to a corrugated wall, staring at one of his feeble, drooping posters— _Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it!_ — but not reading the words. Just thinking.

He needs to rearrange his thoughts. His strategy. This isn’t enough, and he’s doing it wrong; he needs more; he needs to give… more, and less. Separate himself. Get what he needs, and keep everything else to himself.

He won’t live through this, otherwise. He has to do better.

He breathes deep, and finishes his coffee.

——

**> hey**   
**> got a present for you.**   
**> oh yeah?**   
**> what’s the occasion?**   
**> none**   
**> just want to keep you on my good side.**   
**> you do still owe me that tetris match.**   
**> i’ll do you one better **   
**> you want DOOM?**   
**> wait**   
**> you serious?**   
**> yeah.**   
**> it's a game.**   
**> you’re kidding me, right?**   
**> i know what doom is. **   
**> file incoming**

Rhys watches, face impassive, as Jack extracts and boots the game. He jumps in immediately, spawning his guy, and spins, walking towards the walls in excited little zig-zags.

**> goddamn, it feels good to stretch my legs**   
**> you know i haven’t heard anything but the tetris song in weeks?**   
**> i could kiss this weird clangy guitar crap.**   
**> you're a real mensch, atlas.**   
**> not sure what i did to deserve this. **   
**> me neither.**   
**> don’t make me regret it.**

It looks like he’s having fun. Rhys watches him, idle and stony. He can nearly feel the extra gusto with which Jack fires his shotgun into the chests of his enemies.

At the end of the first level, he gets chatty again. Apparently interpreting the gesture as an overture to conversation.

**> sooo. earlier. **   
**> why the white lie?**

Again, the game doesn’t pause while he talks. This time, Rhys just exhales, irritation replaced by passive, tired acceptance.

**> i dunno. who doesn't love the upper hand when it comes to negotiations? **

He watches as Jack picks up a bundle of rocket launcher ammo. He misses an armor pack. Rhys doesn’t bother telling him.

**> i'm just curious, you know. not gonna do anything about it.**   
**> wanna know what he's up to and all. **   
**> kid had potential.**   
**> is that a compliment? **   
**> from handsome jack? **

As if from far away, behind the flimsy barrier he’s erected between his heart and his hands and where they touch the keyboard, Rhys feels the weirdest fucking mixture of emotions. Bitterness in his throat, and that creeping, blooming warmth in his belly. _Still not good enough._ He wants to stamp that out; crush it under his heel, too, until all the poison is spilled, useless, on the floor.

**> what if i tell you he's dead.**   
**> maybe i found him. maybe killed him.**

There's a pause, in the conversation but not the gameplay. The elevator that Jack’s space marine is riding opens into a room full of demons, and he mows them down with his machine gun.

**> honestly, atlas?**   
**> i'd be pretty surprised. **   
**> kid was practically indestructible.**   
**> and believe me, i tried. **

Oh, but Rhys miscalculated.

It’s not the bitter bile that takes over the warmth, but the other way around, and now he can taste pride on the back of his tongue, so sweet it almost makes him gag. Pride, at being told he’s hard to kill.

_Aw, kiddo. Your wires are so crossed._

**> huh.**

Rhys sticks to watching the game for a while, half sunk into his own head. He wrestles, writhes with his pride, his inadequacy, his resentment, and the warm feeling he _still_ gets from Jack’s praise. And after it all, those nauseous, shocking chasers of shame, that he has to swallow with every beat of his heart, again, and again, and again.

It takes a while to tamp all of that down.

Jack’s character dies at the Toxic Refinery, and slowly, as if obligated but unwilling, as if sprinting through water, Rhys joins his second game. Jack’s avatar turns, looks at him, all pixeled and devoid, but Rhys can feel the consideration, the gaze on his own skin.

**> maybe i'll tell you what actually happened. next time i'm feeling generous.**   
**> awesome. **   
**> can't wait. **   
**> 😘 **   
**> ready?**

Rhys blinks, and he is so— strangely, startledly, grateful. The absurdity breaks the spell.

**> oh, no **   
**> you coded in emoji?? **   
**> hell no **   
**> how did you cobble unicode from DOOM and a calendar!!**   
**> lmao**   
**> i'm just that good, baby. **

They move through the first level. Jack covers him when he pauses, standing still and vulnerable, to type instead of shooting.

**> if i’m your boss, i can fire you, you know. **   
**> like**   
**> your style of firing**   
**> i can’t vent you but i can do the next best thing**   
**> lol. and lose your only employee?**   
**> you'd be lonely. **   
**> watch your six.**

It’s easy, now, out of nowhere. To hold back everything he’s feeling, to not let it control him; just banter, and play DOOM, and disregard the maelstrom of emotion that’s been whirling him around. It all slinks back behind his wall. Rhys realizes—  a small alarm in the back of his head, too easily ignored— that it’s because Jack took back control. He turns and smokes the guy sneaking up behind him.

The game’s more unpredictable without the audio cues. He wonders how they sound to Jack; if they’re all 3D, and real. If it’s like he’s standing in the elevator himself, next to Rhys, shoulder to shoulder, as they port to the next level.

**> i never said you were my only employee.**   
**> narcissist.**   
**> ohhh a thousand pardons! very rude of me to assume. **

Their conversation thins out as they progress. Past where Jack died, to the next level, and the next. The gaps are comfortable, when they’re close to— _near_ each other. Just shooting bad guys.

Maybe this wasn’t so miserable a failure. Rhys can’t expect success immediately; for his shield to be impenetrable. He needs practice, and this _is_ … practice. It’s all right. He feels mostly better, now. More in control, somehow, when he’s not controlling anything.

When there’s a lull in the gameplay, he bites back, feeling cheeky:

**> butt stallion is dead, by the way. **   
**> i found her shattered remains. **   
**> whoa**   
**> hostile.**   
**> yeah?**

The game loads, spitting them out into the final level.

**> i’m into it.**   
**> i like to think of it as practical aggression. **   
**> ok. you ready?**   
**> save your bullets for the big guys.**   
**> born ready, babe.**

They wreck the hoard of demons there to greet them. Jack uses his chainsaw, and the goofy carnage makes Rhys laugh.

The aforementioned big guys swarm them next. It takes full clips to defeat each of them, and every narrow win makes Rhys’s blood rush; covering Jack’s back, Jack covering his, as they mow down every last one.

Victory feels fantastic.

They teleport, when they win. Rhys laughs thinly at the irony, rolling his neck to crack it; he’s been sitting here for too long, tensed over the keyboard, and he’s stiff from it. _Worth it, though,_ he thinks. This was... fun. But above all _—_ _practice_.

Then the ending text scrolls onto the screen:

 

**_ONCE YOU BEAT THE BIG BADASSES AND_ **  
**_CLEAN OUT THE MOONBASE YOU'RE SUPPOSED_ **  
**_TO WIN, AREN'T YOU? AREN'T YOU? WHERE'S_ **  
**_YOUR FAT REWARD AND TICKET HOME? WHAT_ **  
**_THE HELL IS THIS? IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO_ **  
**_END THIS WAY!_ **

And the irony of _that_ fails to make him laugh at all.

He sits back in his chair, frowning. “Huh… forgot this game was such a bummer.”

And when he looks back at the chat window, the warmth of their win already dwindling into unease, he sees the message that’s been waiting for him:

**> so, that practical aggression**   
**> do you flirt with all of your many employees, or am i just special?**

Cold water splashes over the guttering flame of his euphoria, and now it’s out for good. He forces his mouth back into a straight line, and bundles this new feeling back in with the rest.

Ridiculous. He was _not_ flirting.

**> hahahaha. **   
**> keep dreaming.**   
**> if ai’s of dead, washed-up ceo’s even do that**   
**> we don't, actually. fun fact.**   
**> tragic**   
**> well, i do **   
**> night**

Rhys grits his teeth, standing as quick as he can. His knees ache. _So close_ to a perfect exit, quick and rude and impersonal, but he just had to ruin it, _had_ to wish him—

**> night, pumpkin.**

He doesn’t quite turn the monitor off before he sees it.

——

Rhys falls asleep tallying his gains and losses in his mind, face smushed sideways against his pillow, feeling… better than he should, all things considered. Unease drifts in and out of his mood; pleased at a step forward, even as he’s mortified at where he faltered; buoyant from the victory, the high points, and little electric shocks of— something good and bad, all at the same time, at the edges of what he’s choosing not to think about.

He dreams of pipelines and pumpjacks, of noxious fumes and liquid gold; dreams of climbing for a thousand years and of falling, and of falling, and of falling, and of never hitting the ground. Of wires spilling from his face, tangled in his fingers; of pulling and pulling and pulling and never finding a root to yank out. He dreams they wrap around his throat.

Rough hands slip up his sides to twist the wires to a garrote, neon whispers in his ear, and he chokes awake, gasping hoarsely for air.

“Fuck.” He leans forward, hands on his face, pressing into his eyes. His chest aches. The back of his throat is sticky and dry; he must’ve been sleeping with his mouth open. _That’d do it._

In the thick, humid darkness of his cramped bedroom, sheets pooled around his legs, tacky with nightmare sweat, Rhys breathes until his heart believes he can. By the time it works, his metal hand has stopped feeling cool against his face.

There’s another problem, though, and it hasn’t gone away.

“Goddammit,” he says to the darkness. “No one is _this_ fucked up.”

He considers ignoring it. But he’s already sticky, already fogged and bothered enough that maybe the implications won’t quite make it to his brainstem. All he… all he _wants_ is to go back to sleep. It’ll be the quickest way.

 _That’s it, tiger,_ the voice murmurs in his ear, as he lets his hand slip down between his thighs. _No one’s gotta know._

“Not now,” he says, so wearily, eyes slipping closed. The back of his head touches the peeling paint of the metal wall. “Not you.”

And, like a concession, the voice slips into the night.

He doesn’t bother taking it slow; the better to keep his thoughts neutral, stop them circling around like a toy train to the same destination, over and over— he thinks of anything else. He thinks of nothing. Of going back to sleep.

He thinks of the posters that used to decorate his cubicle. The way Jack always smiled, _almost_ always, but never with a shred of any kindness. Not even pretending, but just a plainsight threat; the lie was what Rhys told _himself_. The way he admired it. The danger and the thrill. Even later, seeing it in person; blue, transparent, and yet still so hard to see through, past Rhys’s own distortion.

_Ruthless. Just like you wanted to be, right? Just like you still want to._

But there’s no one with, him, now; that voice is his own.

“I am,” he breathes. “I _am_ ruthless.”

_What you’re doing now—_

“ — even he’d be proud.”

_He would be._

Rhys finishes, metal fingers shoved between his teeth to keep from hearing the name that’s lurking in his lungs. He doesn’t say it, but it echoes all the same.

——

He’s decided to take Sasha up on that offer after all.

He crams his shit into his travel bag like he’s being timed. The schematics, the contracts. A change of clothes, he remembers, and has to unzip it again to shove his pants on top of the papers.

Rhys doesn’t look at the computer at all. Not as he pulls on a ratty, patchwork coat that nearly smells nice, against all logic, and Rhys crinkles his face at having to admit that Sasha might’ve been right about him going nose-blind. Whatever. It’s Pandora. Everything stinks here.

He slides a glove on his metal hand, and hooks a bandit mask behind his ears, but nested up in his hair. No need to wear it down quite yet.

Rhys shoulders the bag, and heads to the door. He looks bulkier; nearly anonymous. It’s enough.

He just needs… to get away. Get somewhere else, get out of here. The realization that he’s been avoiding them— his friends— has hit him hard with guilt and loneliness, made his office feel oppressive, and too warm. He needs fresh air.

He doesn’t say goodbye. It’ll only be a couple days, anyway.

The door, he locks tight behind him. Biometric, and actually pretty impressive in its security, if he says so himself; he upgraded from deadbolts and irrelevance after he installed Jack. His walls may be thin, but they’re nigh impenetrable. _Well, at least there’s that_ , Rhys thinks, thumbing the little LED panel. _Hmph_.

It’s a haphazard jumble of shipping containers, blanketed, all, in the shadow of the massive, sheer cliff looming above; almost like train cars that careened over the edge, and stayed where they fell, mangled together. Scrap metal and trash— old billboards, empty dumpsters, miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam— decorate the little hollow, camouflaging its presence with the appearance of a garbage heap.

 _If it looks like a dump and smells like a dump,_ he hears Sasha say. _No, Rhys— like, literally. You live in a dump._

He doesn’t care. In the massive, near-permanent shade of the north-facing cliff, it’s almost invisible from far away. Unassuming, from the outside. Well— from the inside, too.

But that’s just a matter of time.

A long while back, when he first moved in, Rhys set up the simplest safeguard of all. On the farthest container, closest to the choke point of rocks and those strange spikes that Pandora seems to grow out of its skin, Rhys wrote a little bandit symbol in spray paint. Some thieves’ cant that Sasha guided him through; _“been looted.”_

That’s the spot.

When he gets _there_ , past all the garbage, and faces the sloping, dusty valley he has to cross, his own clumsy handwriting behind him, Rhys pulls a little device from the pocket of his coat. He rolls a dial under his thumb— pauses, takes a small, careful, half-step forwards.

He presses a button, and then he’s in Sun’s Cradle.

——

“' _Sun’s Cradle,'_ ” Rhys says, pulling a face. “' _Children of Helios.’_ ” He takes a drink from the dust-caked cup of ambiguous amber liquid, and gags on it, like he always does. “Don’t— eugh— seriously. Don’t you see how that’s a little creepy, dude?”

Vaughn drinks his like it’s warm milk. “It’s what makes them happy,” he replies, all patient and beatific. “Try not to breathe through your nose.”

Rhys huffs. “No, I give up. I don’t even know why I try, I’m never gonna like it.” He pushes his cup across the table towards Vaughn. He’s decked out and stupid ripped, as always, looking— and smelling— cleaner than Rhys thinks he has any right to. Even after a thorough scrub-down in Vaughn’s tub, Rhys feels like there’s still a film of stink on himself.

He squints. It’s something else. Vaughn is all… _clean from the inside out_ , and it’s obnoxious. Not that he’s jealous, or anything.

“You can always come and stay here, bro. You know that, right?” Vaughn picks up Rhys’s cup like it was always his, so _cool_ now, what the hell— and answers like he's reading Rhys’s mind. “I mean, I could get you _set up_. We’re doing this egalitarian thing here— y’know, like, _everyone is equal,_ HR does not dominate R&D— but I’m just saying… you might be _more_ equal than everyone else.” He raises his eyebrows, leaning back, lending to the gravitas of his suggestion. “You’re a big deal with these guys.”

“Pass,” Rhys says. He eyes his cup in Vaughn’s calloused hand, wishing he’d kept it, just to have something to sip (or pretend to sip) significantly. “Weird vibe. Super weird. And I have my own shit in the pipeline, bro. _Big shit_.” He raises his eyebrows back.

Vaughn’s looks at him, and his eyes shine with something Rhys hasn’t seen there for a long time, not since he went all _Vaughn the Baptist_ to his _Rhysus Christ_ — the spark that used to pass between the both of them, growing in conspiratorial contact.

Ambition.

“Y’know... I heard a rumor that Yvette— “

And then the door to the empty bar opens, and the contact dies, as they both swing their heads around to see Sasha, standing in the doorway, shoulders piled with lumpy canvas bags.

“Hey,” she chirps, eyes warm, smile warmer. “You guys talking about how creepy this place is?”

They stand, chairs scooting back from the table. “It’s not creepy,” Vaughn insists, moving to help her unload. “And you’re ruining my sales pitch. I’m trying to get Rhys to live among the living again. Speaking of which—”

“Keep dreaming, Hyperion. This place feels like church.” She hands the bags over to Vaughn, and Rhys hears them clink. _Ah. No wonder the liquor here is so brutal._ “We’re good in our caravan, thanks.”

And then she’s free to turn to Rhys, and he’s right there in front of her.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” he replies.

And she hugs him, warm and solid, skinny arms wrapping around his middle, and Rhys leans to hug her back. Already— already, he realizes how bad he missed this. Needed it. Human contact. _Friends._

“Glad you came,” she whispers. And then, when she pulls back, adds, “Fiona’s outside. In the ‘van.”

There’s a pause. Then Vaughn clears his throat. “I’ll just, uh… take care of these.” He toes the canvas bags piled on the floor. “Pick up the rest later.”

“Sure,” Sasha says, apparently immune to the atmosphere. “I’ll let you know when we’re good. C’mon, stretch; let’s get going.”

Rhys follows her outside. He’d follow her almost anywhere, even when he dreads where he’s going.

——

The caravan is parked a few hundred yards from the little village Vaughn’s made out of Helios’ skeleton. They chat about nothing on the way there, and when they arrive, Rhys climbs in after after her.

He stops on the stairs to look around. It’s mostly the same; familiar, and nice. New furniture (new to them, anyway), and old, fished out of the desert and taped back together. Photos tacked up on the walls. Rhys needs a photo, he realizes, suddenly desperate. His posters are worse than useless. He’ll think about asking.

Fiona’s on the wraparound, huddled over a huge, scribbled mess of papers. Rhys feels hot just looking at her; he took his overcoat off as soon as he was alone with Vaughn, but her jacket’s still on, collar up to her jaw. It makes her look even more hunched; a ball of concentration.

“Hey, Fi. Vaughn tried to bait us again,” Sasha says, all easy. She moves to the little kitchenette, and starts rummaging through the cupboards. “Tried to get Rhys, too.”

Fiona scoffs. “Hell no. I’d rather live in the Blight than with a bunch of Hyperion cultists.” Finally, she glances up, and fixes Rhys with a steely gaze. “Hi, _Rhys_.” Her tone says _speak of the devil._

He smiles, weakly, and climbs the rest of the stairs. “So… I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don’t come at me for: not knowing shit about programming, not knowing shit about guns, not knowing shit about DOOM. I did my best.
> 
> Additionally, to my great regret, I had to cut a scene where Jack finessed Rhys into giving him MS Paint just so he could draw an unflattering portrait theory of what he looks like; [here it is, for posterity](https://imgur.com/a/4qOY2r3). He worked very hard on it.
> 
> Thank you all for your wonderful feedback! It's much appreciated!! <3


	4. Accountability

“It just seems way too risky.”

Three days after his arrival, Rhys’s arms have stopped aching from being forced to unload the caravan. Guns, food, _liquor_ ; the girls have carved a piece out of every market in Sun’s Cradle. Which makes sense, because according to Vaughn— who met Rhys at the town limits, effortlessly taking the crates and duffle bags from his shaking little noodle arms, and wasn’t even winded, the son of a bitch— the ex-Hyperion guys are still, for the most part, a little too scared to leave. “More money than sense,” Sasha agreed, sing-song, licking her thumb and leafing through their fat stack of bills.

By now, though, they’re miles away, parked at the edge of a cliff in— Rhys checks his ECHO eye again— the Rust Commons. It’s nighttime, and he squints at Sasha across the crackling campfire she built between them. It’s brighter than the glow from the inside of the caravan, where Fiona is still sulking. Or, as she puts it— “working.”

The rusty screech of an Eridium mining rig pierces the night, just so irregularly that it catches Rhys off-guard every time. He’s not sure how he’s gonna fall asleep tonight.

They’ve been making the rounds since Rhys slapped his papers on the table, right on top of Fiona’s weird bullshit— she didn’t like that— and explained his reasoning.

He’d practiced his pitch. They heard him out. Fiona looked more and more like he was forcing a lemon down her throat as he went on, but Sasha landed on ‘cautiously open-minded.’

So now they were here. In the middle of nowhere. Touring the sites listed in the contracts, to get a grip on the scope— and, Rhys insists, the _potential_ — of the task. All in the name of chipping away at Fiona’s obstinance, and getting _both_ of them on board.

And, privately— of a break from Jack. The lie— the enormity of what he's doing, what he's already done— is hard to bear alone, but harder, somehow, when he's truly alone with it.

“Like, I’m not saying it _won’t_ work,” Sasha continues. “But isn’t it a little nuts?” She reaches forward to turn the two kebabs she’s roasting on the fire— crowded with some cubed mystery meat, rich-red and marbled with fat, skimmed off the top of their latest Sun’s Cradle shipment. Rhys knows better by now than to ask what it is, and very deliberately turns his ECHO eye off before he glances down at his own.

His is cooked enough, he thinks. A perfect medium rare. He grabs it from the fire, and immediately burns his fingers.

“Ow, shit. I mean, yeah. It’s completely nuts. I have no clue what I’m doing here. But what other options do we have?” He sticks his fingers in his mouth and eyes the meat he dropped on the ground. It still _looks_ okay…

“There’s Fiona’s idea—”

“Fiona’s idea is _beyond_ nuts. Okay? It’s… what’s past nuts. Bananas? It’s bananas.” Rhys fishes his kebab off the ground— with his metal hand, this time— and makes a half-hearted attempt to blow it clean. _On Pandora, it’s more of a five-minute-rule._ Sasha gives him an unimpressed look as he pops a dusty meat-chunk into his mouth. “Mmm. God, that’s delicious. Look, this— ow, my tongue— this is a _good thing_ , okay? The contracts—”

“We’ve been over it, Rhys.” Sasha reminds him. There’s a creak of metal as the caravan door opens, and the light from inside hits the side of her face. “I’m just saying! Money isn’t everything, you know? And the risk-reward factor here is kind of, _ehhh_.” Sasha deftly wraps her sleeve around her hand, and pulls out her kebabs without burning anything. “Hey, Fi. Dinner’s ready.”

Rhys squints at her, suspicious and turned off. “ _Money isn’t_ —? Vault hunting made you so goddamn _weird_. And, I’d like to add: that’s easy for people with money to say.” He yanks at a cube of meat until it slides off his skewer, getting his fingers all greasy as he goes.

“She’s right, you know.” Fiona sits by her sister, taking the kebab she holds out and tearing into it. She talks with her mouth full. “You’re just doing this for your _‘company_.’”

“ _What?_ ” Rhys is so offended he stops with the meat halfway to his mouth. “I’m doing this— what do you think Atlas is even for? No— no! Don’t roll your eyes at me. It’s for _us,_ Fiona. It’s for the, the common benefit, and that means money, and hard decisions, and— and _Eridium mining contracts_ —”

“If you really wanted to _benefit_ us, Rhys?” Fiona leans forward and jabs the sharp end of her skewer in his direction. “You’d stop fucking around with things _way_ above your paygrade, and just help me with the stupid goddamn _map_.”

Rhys throws his meat chunk at her.

Three seconds later, he’s on his back, getting dust ground into his face.

“ _Ohhh, I’m Fiona—_ ” he mocks, twisting his mouth away from her hand.

“Eat it, you little—”

“ _I saw the back of a painting for two seconds and now I think treasure maps are real—_ ”

“You lanky piece of _shit_ —”

Sasha eventually breaks up the fight. Fiona snags her hat up off the ground, muttering that Rhys got meat juice in her damn ear. And after an extended, sulking silence— during which Sasha chews loudly, Rhys spits miserably, and no one apologizes— he decides to be the bigger person.

“Look,” he begins, awkwardly. “I still don’t think this _map_ is gonna lead to anything good. But I’ll see what I can do. Okay? It was in— _his_ office, right? No promises, but… I’ll poke around the crash site. I know some good spots.” Maybe he's imagining it, but the air seems to go a little chillier.

Fiona shrugs, foot tapping by the remains of her dinner in the dirt. “Do whatever you want.”

The rig shrieks from somewhere beyond the reaches of the firelight, and Rhys flinches.

“So,” Sasha says, standing and wiping her greasy palms off on her pants. “Who wants marshmallows?”

——

 

The trip’s a little better, after that. They take turns in the driver’s seat, and rock-paper-scissors for dish duty, and bicker over where they’re heading next. It almost feels— not normal, but familiar.

Rhys realizes pretty early, though, that he should’ve packed more than one change of pants. “I wasn’t expecting to stay away this long,” he says, defensive, as Fiona watches him tie his first pair up to dry on their rearview mirror.

(There’s just so much _mud_. How can one planet be so muddy? It doesn’t help that Sasha keeps full on sprint-kicking trash piles by the varkid nests. He and Fiona are united, at least, in getting pissed each time she’s rewarded with free ammo.)

A few days later, Rhys is back in his first pair. He’s also thirty feet in the air, and the wind is fighting his pomade.

“See anything?” Sasha calls up to him.

“Uh… n-no, not yet,” Rhys yells back, clinging to the ladder on the side of the pumpjack. It’s the third one they’ve found that isn’t working at all, and Rhys drew the short straw for trying to figure out why. (“It’s your dumb idea,” Fiona said, shoving him towards the hulking machine. “Your straw is short by default.”)

(“Unlike the rest of him,” answered Sasha, and they high-fived while Rhys sulked towards the ladder.)

“Could you hurry up?” Fiona shouts now, kicking rocks towards some holes in a nearby dirtbank. “This blows.”

“Doing my best,” Rhys mutters, forcing his feet to move up another rung. “ _It’s not that high_ , they said. _Just don’t look d—_ oh god.”

He reaches the top in one piece, and it’s just as he suspected— he has no idea what he’s looking at.

“Should there be, like, a button…? Or— maybe there’s something down there behind the fence? I don’t know why we didn’t check there first. You guys wanna—” He leans over the edge, both hands vice-tight on the railing to keep his vertigo from overcoming him, and sees— neither Fiona nor Sasha. Instead, a pack a rowdy skags, spitting ineffectually up in his direction.

“You assholes!” he yells, towards where the girls are zigzagging away in separate directions. “You have the guns!”

——

 So it’s taking a little longer than he expected, sure. But another few days won’t hurt.

 _Another few days_ , it turns out, sees them crouched behind some crates at the edge of Headstone Mine, whispering in a huddle so the two mammoth lookouts with ludicrously large weapons won’t hear them.

“Is there even Eridium here? I thought it was just a normal mine.”

“The deed was with the other Eridium stuff. So I guess there’s gotta be?”

“This is way too much trouble, Rhys. You wanna kill a bunch of bandits? I don’t wanna kill a bunch of bandits.”

“That one’s got a flamethrower.”

“No, I don’t want to kill anyone! … Wait, you guys don’t wanna kill anyone? Even if I paid you?”

“That isn’t, like, a thing we do, Rhys. We’re not good at that.”

“Yeah, we’re really not good at that. Remember when—”

“Okay, then, I’ll pay you to find someone _else_ to do it.”

“Just find someone yourself!”

“Ughhhhh— I mean, Athena? Maybe Athena?”

“You’re kidding, right? _Dear Athena, hope you’re well. This is Atlas writing—”_

“Okay, point... taken. So, what— someone at Sun’s Cradle? There’s gotta be, like, a couple tough guys just hanging out there nowadays, right?”

“No, Rhys. I can say with absolute confidence that there are no tough guys hanging out there.”

“Then _you_ think of something!”

“I think we should _leave_ , before they— oh, shit.”

And so on, day after day, caravan collecting a few new bullet holes with nearly every stop they make.

——

After two weeks of traipsing through the countryside, Sasha can’t be patient any longer.

“We’re going back to Hollow Point,” she announces at breakfast, hands wrapped primly around her glass, voice firm and clear against both sets of protestations.

“But I need to keep looking for—”

“Doesn’t that dickhead still work—”

“Non-negotiable,” she interrupts. “I’ve been going along with _both_ your cockamamie schemes for way too long. I need my _stuff_. I need my _me time._ ”

Rhys, begrudgingly, has to admit that that seems fair.

But when they stop for a break, halfway through the drive, and just the _thought_ of piling back in makes him carsick— he can’t help but suggest:

“I could get us there _way_ faster, you know,” he offers, waving the little device from his pocket, temptingly.

They both give him a flat look.

“Yeah, uh,” Sasha says. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, Rhys…”

“No, it’s absolutely that,” says Fiona. “I don’t trust you _or_ the creepy techno-horse you rode in on. That thing is _definitely_ gonna slice me in half.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“How do you know? _Pardon me_ for not being particularly _desperate_ to use stuff you got from—”

“I mean, how _does_ it even work?” Sasha interrupts. She squints at the little rectangle of metal and plastic in his hand, but makes no move to touch it. “Do _you_ even know?”

Rhys falters. “I… know how it works.”

“What if it kills _you_ and it’s just your _clone_ that shows up where you wanna go.”

“Excellent point, Sasha. Thank you.” Fiona crosses her arms. “I’m not trying to give my _clone_ a free ride anywhere.”

Rhys looks between them, harassed. “You guys are goddamn stupid,” he concludes, and climbs back into the caravan.

——

Rhys scribbles notes in the margins of the contracts, handwriting sloppy with every pothole and rock Sasha seems to swerve to hit.

    * _**FUNCTIONAL** : ~~IIII~~ III_
    * _**BROKEN** : ~~IIII~~ ~~IIII~~ ~~IIII~~ II_
    * _**?** : ~~IIII~~ ~~IIII~~ ~~IIII~~ ~~IIII~~_
    * _headstone very angry; athena?? ask vaughn_
    * _market value_
      * _falling_
        * _what_
        * _look into this_
          * _historical rates [jack, helios]_
      * _supplier? elpis? haven’t heard_
    * _1in cubes, brown w/ onion each side (4c boil → thick), serve over rice_
    * _blight_
      * _no_
    * _ask how the pump thingies work (button??)_
      * _google it_



He has fewer ideas of what to do than when he started, but he thinks, suddenly— looking over what they’ve accomplished, even though it’s mostly nothing at all— that he might be having a good time.

Even when they stop to pee, and Fiona kicks a swooping rakk into his freshly-laundered pants.

——

For Sasha, it turns out, “ _me time”_ means finally getting a good look at the SMG schematics.

“I get what you’re saying about the polymer,” she says, tapping her pen against her knuckles. “I can steal enough for a prototype, but probably not a whole line.”

“So, maybe we shouldn’t be basing our business model on what we can and can’t steal.”

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you,” she says, not listening to him at all. He’s sitting on the edge of her desk, watching her pore over the blueprints spread out across it. “Maybe if… hmm. Can you find something for me? In that cabinet back there. Should be like a cylinder, with tubes coming off it.”

Rhys hops off to go pry the metal door open. “Thanks for working on it, by the way. This sort of thing really doesn’t click for me.”

She snorts from behind him. “Good thing you’re not starting a _gun company_ , then.”

He frowns, batting aside an old soda can. “Atlas was already a gun company. I’m just… picking up the mantle.” _Oh, there_ — no, just a beaker.

There’s a creak of leather, like she turned in her chair. “You realize you don’t _have_ to do that, right? Just because old Atlas did?” She sounds exasperated. “You’re literally your own boss. I mean, look at Fiona and me— we make it work.”

“You guys live out of a van with rocket boosters attached to it,” he mutters, reaching back behind a comically large box of bullets.

“Uh, _yeah_. Exactly my point.”

“Got it,” he says, turning. “One cylinder with tubes coming off of it. What is it?”

“Just a hunch,” she says, taking it from his hand. She holds it up to the light, squints, and then rubs at the glass. “Cryo mod. From Elpis.”

Rhys tilts his head. “Like, ice?” He frowns. “To... cool the barrel.” She shakes it, and he hears something splash inside. “That’s actually kind of— wait. Will it even work with the shock mod?”

“I don’t see why not,” she says, pleasantly. And then, decidedly less pleasant: “Let’s see Maliwan do _this_.”

——

Rhys doesn’t mind taking the long way, now that they’re heading back to Sun’s Cradle. In fact, he’s the one who suggests they pull over in this green basin of a valley— “to check out some coordinates,” he says, and neither Sasha nor Fiona is rude enough to point out that his mining map is empty here, for miles.

They spend an hour scaring up lunch, and another wandering around the uncommonly pretty meadow while they eat.

“Hey.” Fiona stomps, and her heel hits metal plating, nearly concealed by overgrown grass. It sounds hollow. She leans over, stuffing the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. “Iv thiff what— I think it is?”

Sasha squats to wipe away the dirt, and whistles, impressed. “Wow, yeah. Old Dahl bunker.”

“Wait, seriously?” Rhys is interested now, zagging over from where he was wandering in circles, idly mapping the longitude into his little device. He whistles, too, when he sees the hatch. “Jeez. We are, like, _really_ lucky at finding stuff like this.”

“Eh. You know how it is,” Sasha says, yanking weeds away from the hinges. Fiona finds the latch under a clod of mud, and yanks on it. “Pandora.”

“Pandora,” Rhys agrees, and together, they get it open.

There’s a short length of ladder before they hit solid floor— “I am _not_ going first this time,” Rhys announced, crossing his arms— and find what turns out to be an underwhelmingly small complex of computer banks, filing cabinets, and one living quarter.

“Well, at least there’s no rotting corpses,” Sasha says, opening a cupboard. “Eugh— never mind.” She closes it again, nose wrinkled.

“Looks like it’s been abandoned since Dahl left,” Fiona says, kicking at a pile of papers on the ground. “Boring.”

“Hey, careful with that— there could be something useful here,” Rhys protests, kneeling down to scoop them back up. “I need everything I can...”

Sasha leaves to investigate another room off the narrow hallway. After a minute, she reappears, looking unimpressed. “Nah, she’s right. This sucks.” She sits heavily on a chair, forcing out a cloud of dust. “There’s just some shitty old machines. I was hoping for a sick grenade, at least. Like, _oh, noo, these prototypes were_ way _too lethal to release to market—_ ” She trails off wistfully. “Hey, you find something?”

Rhys jerks up from where he was staring, wide-eyed, at the papers on the ground. He shoves them back into the pile before she can peek over his shoulder. “Uh, no— nothing.” He swallows. “Just some… expense reports.”

“Ugh. This really is the worst.”

“Lemme just go— look at those machines. Might be some, uh… computer parts. I can use. One sec.”

Sasha shrugs, spinning in her chair, and points him across the hall.

Rhys stares between the device, stacked tight between the server towers, and the blueprints in his hands.

“Hey, can we go?” Fiona drawls from the doorway. Rhys jumps, and tries not to look too guilty when he turns. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

“Yeah. No problem.”

He takes the papers with him.

——

“Be honest,” Rhys says, finger tracing the edge of Fiona’s sketchy recreation of the treasure map on the caravan table. His contracts are spread out, overlapping, on top of it. “You really don’t think I can pull it off?”

Fiona watches him, eyes narrowed, hat slung low on her forehead. Her arms are crossed, until she sighs, and uncrosses them, leaning forward off the couch. Outside, faintly, Rhys hears a sputtering, mechanical sound, and Sasha’s muffled swear.

“I don’t know, Rhys,” Fiona says, finally, tiredly. She rolls a shoulder under her leather jacket, and winces when it pops. “It’s a lot. And it’s gonna be _hard_. Are you really up for it?”

“Look,” he says. He pulls one paper from the bottom of his pile. “This is— this is the plan, okay? I know it’s not much, yet, but… it’s something.”

She takes it from him, and her eyes trace over the scribbled mess of Rhys’s thought process. Rhys glances down at the outskirts of her treasure map, and his mouth goes flat when the word _symmetry_ enters, unbidden, into his mind. _Maybe we’re both bananas._

“I just want what’s best for us,” he blurts out, while she’s still squinting at his strikethroughs and addendums. “For— Pandora, too. I want to do it right, this time.”

She’s silent, for a while. Really reading it over. And then, when she gets to the bottom and her eyes stop moving, he supposes she’s just thinking.

“Rhys,” she says, laying down the paper. In her gaze, there’s genuine— worry. Caution. Fear. And— maybe— hope, he hopes.

He takes the paper back from her, and places it carefully onto the pile. “I _know_ ,” he says, and his voice is raw with honesty. “I promise… I’ll be careful.” He holds his pinky out, and the corner of her mouth twitches before she takes it with hers. “I’m not gonna make the same mistakes again.”

——

When it’s finally time to go— when he’s helped them unload again, and his arms are newly sore, and Vaughn has let him use his tub once more— Rhys finds the homesickness pulling in the opposite direction.

It’s been— way, way longer than he planned. Nearly a month, if he’s done the math right. But as hard as it was to drag himself out of his little trash cave—

It’s even harder, to think of going back.

_What, pumpkin? You don’t you miss me?_

“Not… exactly,” he mutters, fussing with his teleporty-thing— he really needs to come up with a name— in the dusty shade of the bar’s canopy. He considers pretending it’s broken; that he’ll have to stay another night—

“You say something?” Sasha asks, clapping her hands on his shoulders from behind. He jumps, and her fingers slip; she was on her tiptoes.

“Nah,” Rhys says. And he remembers, all over again, why he has to go back.

“Well, we’re ready to hit the road. So… later, dude.” She smiles up at him. “I’ll keep you updated on the gun, yeah?”

“Thanks,” he says. And then, “Hey. Do you still have that camera?”

It’s not a bad picture, even though Rhys has to bend over uncomfortably to make it into frame, and even though his hair still gets mostly cut off. Vaughn is blurry, somehow, and Sasha’s half-blinking; and even though Fiona isn’t smiling, she isn’t _scowling_ , either, and that’s enough. It’s enough, for him, for now.

Sasha gives him a hug, once he tucks it into his jacket pocket. “Hey,” she says, into his hair, just for him. “I’m on your side, okay? Remember. We’re in this. Together.”

“Yeah,” Rhys says. Guilt and dread rise up his throat, but he clamps them down enough to manage a genuine smile. “I know.”

They watch him go, and then he’s gone.

——

It _does_ smell, Rhys realizes, as soon as he breathes in, materializing at the entrance of his corporate junkyard. And it feels so _quiet_ , in a way he didn’t notice before; just the smell of stale wind, and the subtle, sinister hum of electricity, threading through the wires that converge above his office. It's almost spooky.

“I’ve got this,” he tells himself, picking his way through the debris. “I’m ready to go, this time.”

_Are you, kitten? Really?_

“Yes, actually,” he answers, crisply. “I _am_.”

He deactivates the locks with his thumbprint and a retina scan, and glances around, considering, as he sheds his jacket and drops his mask back on top of a broken filing cabinet. _Maybe some… ventilation._ Windows. Natural light; that’s a thing, right? The cracks in the sheet metal aren’t quite doing it for him, anymore.

For now, he just leaves the door open.

The computer’s dormant; a blinking cursor, like the first time he turned it on. Rhys sits down, settles in, and takes a deep, centering breath.

_Ready._

**> hey there!**

He waits a bit, then adds.

**> miss me?**   
**> jack? **

“Hm,” he says, head tilting. _Guess I'll make some coffee_.

He does, and then he drinks it. And when he sits back down— there’s still no response.

His brow creases. “What, are you busy, or something?”

_But that isn’t—_

A horrible, jolting thought; his fingers fly across the keyboard, accessing the program logs.

**> start powershell.exe**   
**> gci -recurse . | select DOOM.EXE,lastaccesstime**

He sits back when he sees the output.

Fifteen days. It’s been fifteen days since Jack last played _DOOM_.

Rhys repeats the sweep on every other program, heart pounding like an alarm clock through a dream; muffled and loud, all at once, and very far away. Sixteen days. Seventeen days. Fifteen. Sixteen. Twenty.

So, this means— what?

He’s gone? _Dead?_ Is that— possible?

Could he have gotten—  

Rhys is just scrambling up to yank the computer around, to see if he could’ve— could’ve left something plugged in, or done something _insane_ , when—

**> ha ha.**

He sees it from the corner of his eye, and relief hits him like a moonshot. He slumps back into the chair, one hand still tight on the edge of the monitor.

**> oh, thank god**   
**> four weeks**   
**> in an empty room**   
**> with minesweeper **   
**> and you ask if i missed you.**   
**> wait**   
**> you could show up with a goddamn cattle prod and i’d ask how far i should bend over.**

Rhys blanches, hand sliding away, back to the keyboard.

**> whoa**   
**> what the hell? **   
**> you're angry?**

Jack doesn’t respond. Vague, uneasy guilt prickles at Rhys’s skin; this didn't even cross his mind.

He glances at the calendar. He wonders if it made the waiting worse.

When he types again, it’s conciliatory.

**> i wasn't here.**   
**> i’m sorry.**   
**> i was scouting a couple of the old mines. **   
**> the ones you gave me the contracts for?**

And then, completely honest:

**> jeez. **   
**> i didn't think you'd be so torn up about it.**   
**> yeah?**   
**> a frickin heads-up might’ve been nice. **   
**> thought you were all done with me here, sweet pea!**

_Great. A temper tantrum._ Rhys pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Not even almost, Jack,” he mutters.

**> you'd know if i was done with you.**   
**> i wouldn’t waste electricity on keeping your terminal powered, for one thing.**

He leans back in his chair, mouth twisted with disbelief.

Jack… missed him, he thinks.

**> cool beans.**   
**> let's make that a promise.**   
**> you can’t just chicken out and ghost me here. got it?**   
**> when you and i are finished? you tell me to my face.**   
**> or **   
**> whatever the hell you call this.**   
**> fine.**   
**> look, just**   
**> word of advice, atlas? **   
**> don't get a dog. **   
**> if this is how you treat all your tamagotchis, i wouldn't trust you to keep it alive. **   
**> i'm out. later. **

And for the first time, _Jack_ ends their conversation.

“Whatever,” Rhys says, after a beat of silence. He stares at the window that minimized itself. “Pissbaby.”

 _Forget it_. He would’ve done good, he’s sure. But nothing’s happening tonight. He’s bone-tired from the trip, anyway. _Might as well crash_.

He doesn’t even bother undressing for bed; just kicks off his boots, creased with days of dust and wear. Then, remembering—

Rhys gets back up, pads sock-footed out to his office, and fishes in the pocket of his coat.

“There.”

The photo looks good, propped up against the chassis of the monitor. His friends' faces make the room feel warmer, somehow.

It helps.

——

Rhys gives his teeth a savage brushing when he wakes up, staring himself down in the mirror. He looks less fucked, he decides, tilting his chin to either side, and leaning forward to stare into each eye. Healthier.

So it was for the best.

When he’s finished with his second cup of coffee, he hauls over an unused computer tower— fingers smudging tracks in the fine layer of dust on the casing as he drags it— and gets to work.

It’s a while before Jack even acknowledges that his space is changing. Rhys knows it’s petulance; there’s no way he couldn’t notice.

But even a Jack tantrum can’t outlast this for long.

**> wait**   
**> wait wait wait**   
**> holy nutballs **   
**> you serious, atlas?**

Rhys divides his attention, with great effort.

**> huh? **   
**> what is this, like**   
**> the entire echo-tainment library?**   
**> oh**   
**> yeah**   
**> not all of it, but all the stuff i’ve found.**   
**> the music is mostly mine, though. so don’t judge me**   
**> harry potter. books AND movies?**   
**> and the secret HBO miniseries.**   
**> apology accepted. **   
**> one hundred percent.**   
**> wait**   
**> 💯**   
**> in fact, when i’m outta here, remind me to give you the handjob of your life.**

Nobody’s listening, but Rhys still scoffs extra loud.

**> pass.**   
**> don't get too hot and bothered **   
**> it's just **   
**> stuff**   
**> okay? **   
**> so when i'm gone you have shit to do **   
**> and i don't have to come home to your whining. **   
**> also**   
**> you're not going anywhere.**   
**> i'll be dead before i give you server access.**   
**> shoot. thought i got that one under the radar.**   
**> by the way, there's no speakers on this unit**   
**> so blast your music all you want**   
**> yeah, i figured that out the first few hundred times you didn't hear me yelling at you.**   
**> and i gave you SOME privileges**   
**> nothing wild**   
**> just so you can customize**   
**> redecorate, basically**

Rhys watches him poke through the files, extracting three at a time, then moving on before they’re even opened. _He’s like a little kid,_ Rhys thinks. _Surrounded by presents._ Too excited to pick just one. And then he pauses, and if Rhys concentrates, he can practically see him sitting back on his heels.

**> hey.**   
**> this isn’t, like, a going away thing, right?**   
**> you're still gonna talk to me?**

“In for a penny,” Rhys mutters, and closes his eyes.

**> yeah.**

He rubs his temples with his thumb and forefinger, and flinches, stupidly, when his metal fingertip touches his neural port.

**> 😘**   
**> look**   
**> i gotta make some calls, okay? **   
**> have fun.**   
**> sure thing, cupcake.**   
**> catch ya later.**

——

Rhys does still talk to him.

And after that, it’s really not so hard. The tension of his absence melts away— water under the bridge— and the fortitude he found in his month abroad with Sasha and Fiona sticks within him. It cleaned him out, like weedkiller; only good things grow inside him, now. Pleasant houseplants, that aren’t so hard to share with.

Rhys lets Jack know, now, when he leaves. And it’s never for so long; just day trips to Sun’s Cradle for supplies, and news, and company. Jack makes requests, occasionally, which result in Rhys slipping into the shaded back alleys of the settlement, flipping through stacks of bootleg ECHO disks, looking for— once, inexplicably— _Speed 2._

Mostly, they talk shop. Jack makes his opinion known on Rhys’s business plan ( **it’s somehow worse than terrible.** ) and suggests how he can fix it ( **start over.** )

Rhys asks him about the pumpjacks. ( **how the hell should i know? what, you think i turned them on myself? i had EMPLOYEES, babe. like, people i paid to do manual labor. add that to your new plan, by the way.** )

Rhys asks him about Eridium.

**> so, go easy on me here**   
**> but you were basically the universe’s main supplier, right?**   
**> oh yeah. nearly exclusive.**   
**> so when you died**   
**> the prices should’ve gone up**   
**> and same when helios crashed?**   
**> like the market value? yeah.**   
**> investments would’ve tanked, though.**   
**> demand’s high, supply’s kaput. the money’s in hoarding it, not mining.**   
**> right**   
**> so**   
**> is there a reason the price would be going back down now?**   
**> as in, completely evening out**   
**> uh**   
**> not unless a new supplier stepped in.**   
**> you see anyone on my turf? on your field trip?**   
**> my turf.**   
**> and no**   
**> everything was either broken, or deserted**   
**> or not deserted, but in a bad way**   
**> maybe elpis?**   
**> elpis is a fart mine.**   
**> no eridium.**   
**> then??**   
**> huh.**   
**> honestly? no clue.**   
**> but keep your ears open, kiddo. **   
**> that’s pretty freaky.**

Rhys keeps his ears open.

In the meantime, Jack gives him more schematics. The grenades, in particular, are interesting; Rhys scrolls over the Longbow diagrams with a box of takeout from Vaughn’s favorite place.

“Hmmph,” he says, smug, around a mouthful of noodles. “Amateur.”

Atlas could do better.

And he is, Rhys thinks. _They_ are.

Jack’s open with suggestions, now, even unprompted. Sometimes, Rhys can barely even follow the leaps and bounds his train of thought parkours across so effortlessly; others, it’s a garden-path, a slow and rich meander, and Jack takes him for a stroll.

These things strike Rhys, every time: his own surprise, at being outmaneuvered. His admiration, still, though it’s gone mostly bitter. And just as old, and deepest of them all: his little, vicious, desperate streak of envy.

Rhys knows it’s not real. That it’s not— _anything_ , more than a glorified hostage situation. But sometimes— when it’s late, and they’ve been brainstorming improvements to the Backburner for hours, and his fingers cramp from taking notes and typing, and his head aches with caffeine and new ideas— and after all of that, Jack says there’s time for one more round of _Quake—_

Rhys realizes he’s having fun, and doesn’t even try to stop himself.

They are each other’s captive audience. Working with Jack, like this— it’s like the sun is orbiting him back.

He is this close to telling him the truth.

And not even to gloat. Just to get it over with. To stop having it be this— this awful, hugging, _suffocating_ tension, like watching a movie he knows is way too frightening for him, and staring at a too-calm static shot— a slow pan up the staircase, music buzzing quieter and higher— and waiting, waiting, waiting for the jumpscare.

It sorts itself out, in the end. And really, Rhys should've known: the jumpscare’s always when you stop expecting it.

——

**> hey. kid. **   
**> hm?**   
**> i know you're cagey about it, so don't think i'm fishing for information, or something. **   
**> you don't gotta tell me anything. **   
**> but i wanna ask you a favor. **   
**> okay? **   
**> just tell me what kind of porn you want, jack**

Rhys smiles against the lip of his mug, still dizzy with their victory; they fuckin’ _wrecked_ Archbishop Lazarus.

**> it’s not that.**   
**> those hyperion guys have the really weird shit. i bet you’d be into it actually**   
**> hey, atlas?**   
**> shut up.**

He tilts his head.

**> sorry. **   
**> go ahead. **   
**> if you really know rhys**   
**> can you tell him something for me?**

Rhys puts down his mug, very carefully.

He waits, without breathing.

**> and if he's not dead, or on the moon, or whatever you said.**   
**> what**

His coffee already tastes stale on his tongue.

**> just tell him **   
**> i think he did good. **

For a wonderful moment, Rhys thinks he won’t feel anything at all.

Then his body catches up. His heart slams against his ribcage, his mind races— he thinks, inexplicably, of the Dahl blueprints still hidden in his duffel bag—

**> and**   
**> sorry.**

And then, of nothing. Because something with thorns has crawled up through his throat. The only weed he didn’t choose to kill, and the only one so sun-starved that it’s grown carnivorous; hulking, with vines as thick as power lines.

Wrath.

**> oh? **   
**> okay. **   
**> and then **   
**> what**   
**> jack? **   
**> would you like me to punch him in the teeth?**   
**> or maybe rip off his other arm?**

He doesn’t care, anymore, but for the record--

this isn’t how he meant for it to go.

**> nah.**   
**> he beat me, fair and square. **   
**> and i was playing dirty. **   
**> but he won.**   
**> took me a while to come to terms with that. **   
**> i mean, duh.**   
**> i'm handsome goddamn jack. i don’t lose.**   
**> but i did. and i get it, now.**   
**> i get why.**   
**> think you can remember all that, atlas?**   
**> y’know.**   
**> for when you tell him.**   
**> you are such **   
**> a fucking**   
**> bastard**   
**> jack**   
**> i trusted you**  
**> yeah. **   
**> i know you did.**   
**> sorry, kid.**

He doesn’t think. He just scrambles for— where is it— there. The neural cable. The new tower has always been equipped for it, but Rhys can’t remember, now, when he plugged it in, or why.

It doesn’t matter, anymore.

With his other hand, he snatches up a small, plastic attachment; a dummy headjack, designed to snap shut and fry the connection if Jack even fucking _tries_ crawling up the line.

This, he made before he built the computer.

_Thinking ahead, even—_

His fingers fumble with rage. He snaps the shield onto the cable, first. And then he jams it all into his head, and he uploads.

He shivers as the connection establishes, eyes clenched, like he’s holding himself together with willpower alone; and when they open, his ECHO eye illuminates, and down, down, down he goes.

And there he is— inside.

In any other situation, Rhys might’ve stopped to laugh. The room Jack’s made himself is ridiculous. Vaulted, white marble, ostentatiously empty but for an enormous chandelier, laddered bookshelves along one wall, and— directly in the center of it all, a fancy-looking leather couch, currently occupied by one Handsome Jack. He has his feet up on it, shoes included. Somehow, that only makes Rhys angrier.

He sees the way Jack’s eyes widen. How he digs his heels into the leather, pushing backwards, sitting up— almost scrambling in his haste to retreat.

 _He’s afraid,_ Rhys realizes, with perfect clarity. And when he takes a step forward, he understands why.

His boots melt angry, golden craters in the floor. The air around him fizzes; furious, molten code leaping off his skin like hot flares spit from the surface of the sun. When he speaks, Jack’s books shudder off their shelves onto the ground; each word, a coronal mass ejection.

“ _Bull. Shit._ ”

Jack’s so far back against the couch that the top of his head is concealed by something semi-opaque in the air— their chat window, Rhys realizes, pinned in place above where Jack was laying. He catalogues that knowledge without emotion. Just as dismissively, he surveys the pile of junk surrounding Jack’s couch: a pizza, uneaten; their schematics, covered in ballpoint notes; a violin; _The Prisoner of Azkaban_ , heavily dog-eared; roughly thirty neon bouncy balls.

With a flick of Rhys’s hand, the window disappears, and Jack is exposed.

If Rhys were Jack— a predator— he’d know the look of prey.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Rhys says. He sneers, and it vibrates off of him; the blueprints flutter in the hot wind of his approach. “Like you’re _surprised._ ”

Jack manages to hold up an arm. “Kiddo, listen—”

“Don’t,” Rhys says, “call me,” another boiling step, “ _kiddo_.”

Jack’s hand— his _hand_ , it’s real, and solid-looking, _flesh and bone_ — splays between them, as he flinches from the brilliance, or the heat. Rhys can’t tell.

His fists clench, flesh and metal, and golden code drips off of them like lava, sizzling onto the marble.

“How long.” Rhys demands, when he’s right in front of him. “How long did you know it was me?”

Jack’s hand goes higher, like he’s blocking out the sun. But in the shadow, he meets Rhys’s gaze.

And though he’s squinting— though he knows, plainly, that he’s probably about to die— Jack’s mouth still twists with wry exasperation. 

“Oh, babe,” he says. Pity and patience. “Who else would plug me in?”

Rhys twists back his metal arm, swathed in gold-hot fire, and with all the force he can muster, he slugs Jack in the face.

The punch knocks him clean off the chaise. The force of his landing sends the violin skittering across the floor with an offended caterwaul, bouncy balls scattering in an incongruously comical blast radius around him.

And just like that, the rage cools. It flakes off of him like ash, and when it's gone, it's only Rhys, solid and real. He stares down at his hand, flexing his metal fingers, experimental. He breathes, and his throat is clear; no choking leaves, no suffocating heat.

On the ground, Jack struggles up onto his elbows. His jaw flickers where he clutches it: lines of angry gold blending into the torn hole of _blue_ , interrupted code like ripples on his skin— before absorbing, fading. He stares— like he’s amazed— at the trickle of symbols smudged off on his palm, like a transferred bruise.

And then, he stares at Rhys.

“ _Ow.”_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE: now with [incredible illustration by everkinged](https://twitter.com/everkinged/status/1124391559456264192)!!! 
> 
> “Admin privileges, bitch.”
> 
> Hi guys! A few notes.
> 
> 1) Because I’m realizing I haven’t really given any indication: this is gonna be on the longer side. So don't worry! The end is nowhere near.  
> 2) Jack cried at all the sad parts in Harry Potter.  
> 3) Thank you all so very much for your support. ❤️


	5. Incentives

Rhys looks everywhere but Jack. At the books strewn haphazardly over the floor, from his outburst, and then the bookshelves themselves, so tall they draw his eye all the way up to the ceiling— where he sees a thin flicker of gold, like a ribbon, hanging from the vaults. Not hanging, actually— winding _up,_ from his own head. He raises a hand to touch it, but his fingers pass right through.

When he glances back down, he catches Jack’s predatory gaze fixed on the same phenomenon, sharing his curiosity. Rhys curls his hand back to his side.

Jack breaks the silence. “Nice arm,” he says. “Suits you better.”

Rhys toes at the junk, kicking away a spared bouncy ball. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I think it does.”

“Packs a _hell_ of a punch, too,” Jack says, rolling his jaw and wincing as he sits up. “Like, second worst on my all-time list. Wait, no— third.”

Rhys watches as Jack hooks an arm over the couch and hoists himself up. He looks… fine. Normal, for as normal as this situation can be, and considering that it's been years since Rhys has even  _seen_ him like this— all solid, and colored in correctly. Rhys looks down at his own hands, fingers splayed; he looks normal, too.

Jack stands, and stretches, and when he speaks again, it almost sounds the beginning of something diplomatic. “So, listen—”

“I made it myself,” Rhys interrupts. “The arm, I mean. I had to.”

Jack raises his chin, and regards him through slightly narrowed eyes. “That so?” His tone makes Rhys take a nervous, half-step backwards, but all Jack does is sit back down, in the same spot as before.

“Yeah, uh. It took weeks.”

Jack whistles, low and impressed, and Rhys can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. “No kidding. How ‘bout the eye?”

“Longer,” he says, unpleasantly. The memory makes his teeth clench. And then he turns, shoulders hunched, and goes on before Jack can ask another question. “So— okay. In the interest of time— can I just give you the recap?”

Jack raises his eyebrows. “Knock yourself out.”

Rhys nods, steeling himself. “So, you remember the first part— where I ripped myself to pieces? Cut you out of my head? Yeah? Well, after _that_ , I fainted! Right in the rubble.” His voice rises slightly in pitch. “Like, immediately. So don’t, like, worry that you missed all the good parts, or anything.” He curls the fingers of his flesh hand around his metal wrist, rubbing. “I was out for a while, dunno how long. Woke up. Figured I had killed all my friends.”

Telling this story is difficult, even with affected, distant nonchalance. But he has to. “So, I grabbed your Atlas deed and skipped town,” he continues, clipped and breezy. “Put myself back together. Wasted a few weeks looking for people, just in case. Gave up, after a while. And then I was alone.” He crosses his arms, and stares right at Jack. “And that whole time, _you_ were burning a hole in my pocket.”

Jack meets his gaze, considered and neutral. Rhys laughs. “I think I started hooking you into a system, like, a _hundred_ goddamn times. Just so I’d have someone to talk to.” He shakes his head, as if at near-disasters of his callow youth, rather than _all the mistakes leading up to the one he finally made_. His heel squeaks on the tile when he turns; he realizes he’s pacing. “So I kept busy. Started working on the company, for real. But it wasn’t really— I mean, it was _just_ me, and I didn’t have… y’know.” He snaps his fingers. “That _spark_.”

Jack’s frowning, now, heel bouncing impatiently at each dull twist in Rhys’s story— but then he picks up on the thread, and self-satisfaction turns his face sweet again. “And that’s when you turned to your old pal Jack for help.”

“Nope,” Rhys answers, coming to a stop. He looks at Jack, and grins, brash with pride. “ _That’s_ when I opened the Vault.”

Jack echoes, like he thinks he might’ve heard wrong, “You opened the Vault?”

“ _I,”_ Rhys says again, taking a step towards Jack, “opened a _Vault_.”

Jack sinks back against the couch, and gives Rhys an appraising look. Like he’s sorting him into a different mental category, in light of all this new information. “Huh,” Jack says, staring at him. His voice is slow with thoughtful surprise. “I guess you really are something.”

Rhys’s pride is replaced immediately by irritation. “Yeah, I’m _something_ ,” he spits. “And don’t, like, go and think I did any of that to impress you.”

Jack’s thoughtful gaze crunches into an incredulous squint. “What, like I was friggin' Mufasa in the sky?” He waves a hand above his head and scoffs. “Hate to break it to you, Simba, but I wasn't watching. Not even from your pocket, or— god, I _hope_ it was your pocket. Point is, I’m not _taking credit_. Much as I wish I could.”

Rhys stares at him, sidelong and suspicious. “Well. Glad we’re on the same page.” And then he adds, “Asshole.”

He isn’t sure what reaction he’s expecting, but Jack tilting his head, as if conceding a point, is not it.

“Why aren’t you trying to kill me?” Rhys demands, just as Jack opens his mouth to answer.

“You— Huh?”

“I— I punched you, Jack. I _just_ called you an asshole, to your _face_. Not to mention, all the stuff I said out there,” he adds, waving his hand towards the vague point on the vaulted ceiling where the golden ribbon melts through the marble.

Jack’s brow creases. “What’re you— what, are you saying you _want_ me to? It kinda sounds like you’re trying to convince me, here.”

“No,” Rhys says, realizing that he probably gave too many good reasons.

Jack crosses his arms, and the way he’s slumped down against the couch makes him look petulant. His jaw works, like he’s literally chewing over his answer. “I guess I did some soul searching of my own. Happy?”

Rhys scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

Jack gives him a dirty look. “Fine, be a little bitch about it.”

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“Okay, well— sit down, first. You’re freaking me out, pacing around like that.”

Rhys narrows his eyes, considering the couch. It’s big enough. There’ll be at least three feet between them. “... Okay. But if you try anything, I’m out of here before you can say _factory reset_.” He sits gingerly, right on the edge.

Jack's gaze slips from Rhys down to his own fingers, tapping out a leisurely rhythm on his crossed arm. “Look,” he begins, finally. “That whole time, two years? While you were out having fun adventures, fricking— _Vault hunting?_ ” His brow creases around the words, still incredulous. “I was... nowhere. Nothing.” He stares, absorbed, at his own blunt fingernails. “And it wasn't like sleeping, or a, or a... coma, or something. I felt it. All of it.”

Rhys listens, guilt tickling his stomach. That was _his_ fault. At least if he’d crushed the eye, Jack would have just _died_.

_Well. I guess it paid off, in the end, huh?_

Rhys grimaces.

“Just two, long years,” Jack continues, “ticking by. ‘Course, I didn't know how long it was. Felt like forever. Every _second_ felt like forever.” His eyes narrow around the next part, and his grip goes tight on his bicep. “All I had were my thoughts. And all I thought about? Was _you_.”

The word twists, packed with so much malice that it makes Rhys’s blood go cold.

Jack continues, oblivious to Rhys’s pallor. “At first? I thought about aaall the fun ways I would to rip you to pieces, cupcake. Just absolutely _destroy_ every last shred, then bring you back to do it all over again.” There’s so much relish in Jack’s voice that, for the first time, Rhys doesn’t doubt that he’s telling the truth at all.

And then Jack barks a laughs, and shakes his head, as if at a wistful memory. “That was a hard one to get over. Because I don't— I don't _lose_.”

Rhys’s gaze flicks briefly to the chat window. It’s what he said before.

He’s brought back by a change in Jack’s tone. “And then, believe it or not? That got boring.” He laughs again, and this time, it sounds more surprised than sarcastic. “Crazy, right? ‘Cause I mean, believe me, Rhys— I got one _hell_ of an imagination.”

Rhys’s mouth twists. His memory flickers with the screech of metal, and buzzsaws on pneumatic arms. He believes him.

“But I ran out of…” Jack waves his hand, flippantly, searching for the word. “Scenarios.” Rhys very much doubts that— but Jack goes on, sounding begrudging, so he listens. “It all got kinda old. Feeling that way, y’know? Staying angry for so long.”

Rhys raises his eyebrows, staring at him. “You’re saying you… got _bored_ of strangling me?”

“Like I said,” Jack replies, frowning at the ceiling. “ _Believe it or not_. It was a long goddamn time.”

“Strangling is, like, your _hobby_ ,” Rhys says. He leans in, incredulous. “Did I _install_ you wrong?”

Jack shoots him a sour look. “Yeah, well, _you_ try doing sudoku, or— what’re you into, model airplanes?” He twirls a finger, squinting, as if trying to recall. “Checkers? You know what— doesn’t matter. Whatever it is— try doing it for ten eternities straight and tell me you don’t feel a little over it.”

“I’m not into—”

“ _Point_ is,” Jack continues, mulishly, “I moved on. Thought about other stuff, instead.”

Rhys waits, and when he doesn’t continue, realizes he’s waiting for a prompt. “Uh, like…?”

Jack lifts a hand to his jaw, working absently again at the spot Rhys punched. He sighs, like just admitting this is making him suffer. “Like how it was kind of sick, when you did that thing with your arm. Y’know, _crrrrshk—”_ he mimes ripping two halves apart. “I mean, gross as hell.” He tilts his head. “But _pretty_ badass.”

It’s a perverse topic, Rhys notes, in the back of his head. Even for them. But he can’t help but feel a little proud, all over again. “It hurt,” he confirms, helpfully.

“No shit,” he answers. “That’s what made it badass. Didn’t think you had it in you.” Finally, Jack glances back to look right at him. “I—”

“You underestimated me,” Rhys realizes, and says aloud.

“Yeah, I was— just about to say that. Can you let me finish?”

“I’m just—”

“Jeez. It's like you don't want to be complimented.”

“Shove it up your ass, Jack,” Rhys says, and scoots fully onto the couch. “Talk.”

“I underestimated you the whole time, babe. That's what I realized.” The sincerity in Jack’s voice— in his gaze, piercing right through Rhys’s wide eyes— it only barely slips through before Rhys slams shut the bulkhead on his heart.

 _It doesn’t sound like he’s lying_ , Rhys tells himself, firm and urgent. _That’s how you know he is._

Jack continues, unaware. “And maybe I... _kiiind of_ came around to the idea that I got what was coming to me.” He holds up a hand to stave off anything Rhys might say— which is nothing, even though his mouth falls open, because hearing that, even from _lying_ Jack— he can’t believe his ears.

“Not that I was glad to be back in limbo,” Jack adds, in case Rhys got the wrong idea. “ _Hell_ no. I may've come to terms with you beating me, pumpkin— but I still had a will to live.” He shrugs, one broad, muscled shoulder. “And then the lights came back on. Figured it was my chance to make it up to you. Like I’d earned it, or… whatever.”

Rhys looks away, suddenly embarrassed. At his— at himself, from the past. Because this is so _transparent_. Such empty flattery; such carefully-baited hints at Rhys’s capacity to— to change him. And he’d fallen for it, once. _So easily._ “Yeah,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Okay.”

(It doesn’t matter if it’s true. Any, or all of it. It only matters that Rhys _wants_ it to be; that he desperately, stupidly wishes; that maybe this time it really _is_ different, and— that’s what makes it dangerous. That’s why he has to crush it, like a bug, before it bites him.)

Rhys stares down at the blueprints Jack was working on. He sees his little business plan, scribbled into one of the margins.

“You were wrong, by the way,” Rhys says, once his mind has wandered back around, cutting through the weighty silence.

Jack looks at him, eyes narrow. “Wrong about what.” He sounds almost— nonplussed, Rhys thinks.

“Helios.” Rhys smiles at him, thinly. “I thought I’d murdered everyone, like you said. But a whole bunch of them survived.”

Jack tilts his head back, skeptical. “Huh. No shit?”

Rhys nods, stretching out his long legs, boots crossed against the brilliant white tile, and picks at a loose thread in the fabric of his pants, by his knee. And then, tinged with embarrassment, he admits: “And they kind of… worship me, now?”

He’s startled by Jack’s sharp laugh, and even more when he leans across the couch to clap Rhys on the thigh, grinning. “Well how ‘bout _that_ , champ? Welcome to the club! Oh, honestly? _Honestly?_ That checks out. Most of those idiots, without someone’s dick to suck, they’d _starve._ ”

Rhys jerks his leg back from the touch, and Jack retreats, palms out, but still smiling. “Unlike _you_ , I don’t encourage them,” he bites back, under his breath.

Jack waves a hand, dismissive. “Eh, you’ll get there. But still— friggin’ _bizarre_ , right?”

And Rhys can’t help but smile, reluctantly, at the commiseration. “Haha… yeah.” _And it is,_ he thinks. “Friggin’ bizarre.”

“Y’know, that makes me think of— I remember the first time a guy pissed his actual pants at the sight of me. Intern, fresh off— I don’t know, Isolus? Some craphole. So he’s got this pocket protector,” Jack begins, and spends the next minute animatedly telling a story that Rhys can’t find much humor in; because of the human rights violations, in part, but mostly because he isn’t in the mood. “Had to send his family an invoice for the elevator,” Jack concludes, eventually. “Anyway, first time that happened! You believe that?”

“That story is terrible, Jack.”

“Yeahhh, he was the worst.” Jack’s grin fades, wistful, and he counters himself. “Might make good employees, though. Your little fanbase. Ever consider that? Nice, desperate pool of candidates, hand-picked by yours truly?” And like deja-vu, Rhys is reminded of the long nights, the suggestions, the _business plan_ — everything he’s treating like it’s real, even if the intention never was— and suddenly his head hurts so bad with trying to remember the difference. “I’m just saying— I’ve done all the hard work for you. You should go headhunting,” Jack finishes. He’s hunched forwards, sifting through his junk, paying Rhys and his mild dissociation no mind.

Rhys forces a cough, to shake off the tension white-knuckling his throat, and then he can speak again. “Yeah, I’m… working up to that.” It only sounds a little strained.

Jack finds what he was looking for— a stress ball, bright yellow, with a goofy little face— and sits back up. He gives Rhys a calculating look. “How many guys do you actually have right now, Atlas? Run the numbers by me.”

The thread on Rhys’s pants finally comes loose between his fingers. “None,” he admits, guardedly. “It’s still only me.” He rolls it into a little nervous ball as he continues. “It’s— stupid. But Atlas feels important,” he says. “Like I have to really nail it. I— I don’t want to waste it on people who won’t stick around, or do it right.”

There’s a pause. Rhys wonders if Jack understands; if he can relate. And then, a moment of realization: “Oh. And you, sort of,” he adds. “Though you’re more like... contracted work? Except you didn’t sign anything. And I’m not paying you. But I guess you count.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Oh, wowww. Jesus. So generous! And here I thought you’d forgotten all my charitable input.”

 _It feels the same,_ Rhys realizes, absently. Even after the last half hour, the revelations and the violence. Somehow, the core of their— _banter_ remains unchanged.

“Jack,” he says, seriously, after a moment. “Hypothetically— but be honest with me.” A deep breath. “If I— if I let you out.” He looks over, and locks his gaze. “What would you do?”

Rhys watches Jack’s face go completely impassive. No— almost. A tiny muscle twitches, at the back of his jaw. He wonders, if he were to break eye contact, if he’d see Jack’s fist clenched around the stress ball.

“Would you finish what you started?” Rhys doesn’t need to spell out what he means.

At length, the muscle relaxes. And Jack answers— asks— “Why don’t you tell me what you think.”

And Rhys considers, honestly. He studies Jack’s face— nearly identical to how it looked on all those posters, back on Helios. Younger than the AI in his head had even seemed. The only thing not picture-perfect is a few swoops of hair, knocked loose from when he hit the floor. _It’s like an avatar_ , Rhys realizes. _A conscious projection._ He wonders why he still has on the mask.

“I think you _have_ changed,” he answers; and this, at least, is honest; this, he truly believes.

“Yeah?” says Jack, raising his eyebrows. “How so? Apart from my heart growing three sizes, yada yada.”

“I mean— I think you _are_ kind of humbled,” Rhys replies, considering the tiny hole the thread left in his pants. “Metaphysical time-out might’ve actually done you some real good.”

(But not that, not really, not enough to put his money on it. But he knows it’s what he has to say.)

“Hmm,” Jack says. He throws the stress ball from one hand to the other, and then back. “Look, kid. I’m not gonna kill you, if that’s what you’re trying to—”

“I found Dahl’s blueprints for the Field Reconstruction System,” Rhys blurts out. He’s tipping his hand— showing a card he planned to show. But it still surprises him, the speed and strength with which the words punch from his lungs.

Jack stops playing catch with himself. “What?”

Something changes in Jack’s expression, Rhys notices, heart falling. Something tiny. The lazy, morose light in his eyes— the heavy-handed remorse— it goes sharp as a knife’s edge, and every muscle along the border of his mask tightens, all at once. Imperceptible, but for the sum of its parts.

Not for the first time, Rhys feels like he’s staring straight up from the bottom of the sheer cliff that shadows his home, wondering if he’s equal to the task of climbing it.

“And an actual prototype,” he adds, mouth dry. “Even you never got your hands on that.”

There’s a long and heavy pause.

“That’s interesting,” Jack says, finally. As if Rhys were telling him about the weather in a place he’ll never visit. As if it’s not particularly germane to the discussion. As if it really isn’t interesting at all, except for the slow and careful way the words form on his tongue.

“I wanted to tear them up,” Rhys confesses, to the floor, now. “I wanted to— to burn them.” His fingers curl around the side of the couch; the leather’s cool and smooth against his skin. “But I couldn’t.” He looks at Jack, and his brow pinches, and now, he only wishes he were lying; still saying anything, just to earn some trust. “It was like you were there again. Holding my arm back. Every time I tried.”

Jack holds his gaze, and seems to mull this over. The wheels in his head are nearly audible, echoing across this ludicrous, empty cavern of a home. “I get it, Rhys,” he says, finally, cautious and patient. “We’ll take it slow.”

“If at all.”

It’s another moment before Jack concedes that, too, with a tilt of his head. “Sure. Yeah.”

Something boils over inside Rhys, as he stares at him. An alarm bell, a hint of panic, constricting his chest, tighter and tighter, building and wrapping until it’s almost impossible to bear— and then, just as he thinks he’s going pressurize, to crumple like a can, it falls away in tatters, limp and rotten. He slumps back into the couch. The leather is too stiff to have much give; it isn’t very comfortable at all, actually.

He should probably leave.

“Well,” Rhys says, wearily, when his heart stops galloping, “the skag’s out of the bag, now, I guess. I mean— apparently it always was.” He frowns, still pretty bitter. “So I may as well install a holo-projector. Let you come laugh it up at my crappy office.” Then, an afterthought: “Oh, and some speakers. If you promise not to keep me up at night.”

Jack’s good humor recovers in the same soap-bubble pop as Rhys’s broken tension. He smirks with his canines, and what Rhys thinks might be genuine amusement. “Oh, can’t wait for _that_.” He tosses Rhys the stress ball, without warning, and Rhys fumbles to catch it. “And, uh, by the way…”

“What?” Rhys gives the stress ball an experimental squeeze. It still feels warm, somehow, from Jack’s hand— and he can’t even begin to figure out how _that_ works, here.

“Did you make this house call just to clock me?” Jack asks, while Rhys’s attention is downwards. “Because that handjob’s still on the table.”

The stress ball hits the floor with a squidgy _thump_. Rhys’s heels bang into the wooden frame of the couch, he pulls his legs in so fast. He whips his head up to stare at him, scandalized. “Jack!”

He’s got his fingers laced behind his head, an ankle up on one knee. Infuriatingly casual, for someone who just made all of Rhys’s internal organs spasm at once. “Seriously, buddy, I meant it. I owe you _big_ for the remodelling. You see the chandelier?”

Rhys’s stomach finishes its sixth rotation, and doesn’t quite stick the landing. “No— _no_ thank you. Absolutely— no.” He denies, very firmly.

“Your loss,” Jack replies, with an easy shrug of his raised arms. He’s polite enough to close his eyes, like he’s ready for a nap, while Rhys chases the heat down from his face. He thinks very hard about dunking himself head first into ice water, until any other mental images are thoroughly dislodged.

“I’ll, uh,” Rhys says at length, painfully awkward, “do you want— I mean— haha.” He clears his throat. “I can code you, like, a _girlfriend_ …?”

Jack’s mouth opens, and he cracks his eyes to give Rhys an astonished look. He seems genuinely disturbed by the suggestion. “Whoa, uh… _yikes._ Kitten, I— I don’t even want to _see_ what your brain would cook up. Jeesh. I have— look at this, I have goosebumps.” He _shivers_ , that’s just overkill, and Rhys is about to attest to his _perfectly normal_ taste in women, actually, when Jack adds, “Besides, I’m not the one who needs to get laid.”

“You know what?” Rhys announces instead, standing. “I think I’ll do it anyway. Populate this whole damn place.” _CL4P-TPs,_ he thinks, viciously. _With eyelashes and lipstick._

But Jack one-ups him immediately, patience clearly thinning. “Or how ‘bout leaving a copy of _you_ behind?” he suggests, all mock enthusiasm. “Built-in AI, way better than you could code yourself. Plus it’ll be _way_ more fun for you, when you’re watching me go to town.” He finishes, with the brutal precision of a surgeon: “Sicko.”

The last scraps of Rhys’s composure crumble into dust. “Okay, that’s— I think— that’s enough for one day. I’m gonna go.” He reaches up for his neural port, and that really makes Jack open his eyes; he turns his head to hit Rhys with the full force of a victorious smirk, even as his gaze stays trained on his temple.

For a moment, he’s just grabbing at air; the wire dissolves as it winds upwards, and the peripheral is screwing with his bearings. But when he tries again, fist curled up against his skull, his fingers close on something solid, and he pulls it free.

Jack watches him go.

——

Rhys breathes real air again. He couldn’t tell the difference, in there, but now his lungs flood with cold— and, glancing over, he sees he left the door open. Again. He stands, letting the neural jack fall from where he found it, in his palm.

“Come on in, bandits,” he bitches to himself, yanking the door shut. He engages the lock, too; for good, if belated, measure. “Free meat sack inside! Barely used and totally defenseless!”

_Windows. Right._

** > you okay up there, champ? **  
** > sure hope i didn’t say something to make you feel unwelcome. **  
** > you were looking kinda funny just before you logged. **

The messages are waiting for him when he sits back down, and they immediately purse his lips into an unamused line. He won’t give him the satisfaction.

 ** > i have no idea what you mean. **  
** > anyway, look **  
** > it's gonna be a few days before i can get my hands on a whole hologram set up, ok?  **  
** > so don't ask me a million times about it. **  
** > aww, buddy.  **  
**> you don’t gotta lie. **  
** > there’s company coming! **  
** > no one’s gonna judge you for taking time to tidy up. **  
** > couple days, though, huh? it’ll take you that long? **  
** > yikes. **

Rhys tunes him out, eyes drifting to a blank patch of pixels. He lifts his fingers, and skirts them gingerly over his temple. The port feels warm, but that’s— not _not_ normal. It usually is, when he’s plugged in for a while. And he feels alone, he thinks? Jack touched his knee, but— no.

 _He didn’t try anything,_ Rhys decides, firm. _I’d know_.

He wasn’t in there long, but long enough that it was difficult. _To be honest,_ Rhys admits, picking absently at the loose thread that’s by his knee again, like magic, _I fucked it._ Nearly start to finish. He never quite found his footing; only ever got the upper hand by reckless accident. He started so poorly to begin with— walls down and useless, anger tearing his heart wide open, _throwing punches_ — it’s amazing he recovered at all.

He’ll wait a few days, he decides, and go back in again. Maybe for a little longer, if he can mentally recharge enough for that. And he’ll be ready, this time; prepared to play his hand. To reel him in.

Because that’s what it’s for, at the end of it all. Rhys needs Jack to trust him.

For Atlas. And everything.

It’s just harder than he thought— remembering not to trust him back.

(Rhys thinks of Sasha, and Fiona. And he wishes, for the millionth, trillionth time, that he were a better liar.)

When he refocuses, Jack’s text has forced Rhys’s last message halfway up the screen. He’s describing, in detail, an episode of something called _Hoarderbots: Extreme Salvage._ ( **it’s hilarious** , he writes. **especially when they have to bring a whole extra trash barge, just for the robot’s busted friends.** ) Rhys skims over the conversation, sitting back in his chair, metal finger tapping out a thoughtful rhythm on the desk.

 _This_ is Jack, for real; every abrasive, overwhelming inch of him. _We were both pretending,_ Rhys realizes, though he can’t really figure out why. Jack was playing at— docility, maybe? _Contrition?_ No; his contrition is still... up for debate. And frankly, Rhys would rather not think too hard about that, just yet.

But, whatever Jack’s angle _was_ — why stop now? What would he feign for so long, just to give up on as soon as it worked?

 _Restraint_ , Rhys supposes, and that feels almost right. _Calm_.

Which means this is— this is Jack, just stretching his cognitive legs after months of cooped-up caution. Letting loose. Slipping back into being a total dick.

There is no ulterior motive, here, Rhys realizes; nothing feigned, and nothing to suspect. What motive could there be, in acting so obnoxious?

He just isn’t worried, anymore. He’s _relaxing_.

It’s… absurd. Tactically _bonkers_. And so unintentionally charming that it makes Rhys smile, behind his other hand, for nobody’s benefit at all.

 ** > so, all i’m saying? invest in some scented candles. **  
** > you’ll thank me later.  **  
** > jack. **  
** > yeah? **  
** > what? **  
** > tl;dr **  
** > good night. **

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, important note, in case i've been too cagey: this fic messes around with the “new-u stations aren’t canon” mantra. they _are_ canon, here, but Hyperion never managed to steal the tech off of Dahl. different means, (kind of) same end. read into this note what you will.
> 
> phew. it’s been a pretty rough week for me! next week is gonna be crazy, too. so thank you all for being patient, and for your AMAZING feedback last chapter! i know this one was a little slow, but things should pick back up again in no time. hang in there!
> 
> hope you all enjoyed the bl3 stream!! <3 i'mmm dead.


	6. On My Mark

**> c’mon**   
**> c’mon c’mon c’mon**   
**> rhys**   
**> rhysie**   
**> hurry up**   
**> rhys**   
**> did you leave?**   
**> ok, dude? **   
**> this would go a lot faster if you stopped making me put my stuff down every ten seconds to respond to you.**   
**> do you think i’m getting distracted?? **   
**> there are no carnival barkers in my office, jack. **   
**> i’m not, like, wandering off to throw darts at balloons.**   
**> so hold your goddamn horses.**   
**> first of all: pretty rude. but i’m gonna let it slide in the name of workplace cooperation.**   
**> and second**   
**> my horses have been out of the fricking horse house for so long they’ve all had feral little horse babies and established a feudalistic horse society, unfettered by the rule of man. **   
**> i'm ready to stretch my legs!!**   
**> “horse babies”?**   
**> those are called ponies, jack.**   
**> what? **   
**> no they’re not.**   
**> hahaha, oh my god**   
**> they absolutely are**   
**> uh, no. **   
**> a pony is just a horse that’s really small. **   
**> are you seriously stepping to me with this?**   
**> it's ready.**

Rhys sits back. He feels unpleasantly sticky in his black suit; it’s getting hotter, and the ventilation is getting worse. He’ll have to start dressing down. _Great timing_.

He flips a switch on the projector, installs a driver, runs an executable— and the second it’s loaded up, Jack flickers into being, like his nose was pressed against the glass door of a closed-up store, and he tumbled in the moment it unlocked.

 _It’s… bizarre,_ Rhys thinks, staring at the image spit out by the projector. Jack takes inventory of himself as soon as he materializes, patting down his chest with his palms. Rhys takes inventory, too; his stomach clenches with instinctive apprehension.

There’s a jarring, presque-vu familiarity to it all. It’s like looking at two different images at once, layered on top of one another; Jack in the flesh, and Jack in the code. The two versions Rhys has known, and the liminal state between them both; like the covers of those ancient books about the shapeshifting teens. He’s _Jack_ , like in his vaulted marble room, but only halfway solid, and tinged blue, like Rhys is looking at him through colored cellophane. His image swims, subtly; interrupted by the dust motes floating through the projector’s beam, like a mirage. Rhys thinks it might give him a headache, if he stares too long.

“Weird,” he murmurs, out loud.

Jack looks up from his own hands. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just— you look like someone went to one of those ECHOsites and found out what AI-you and real-you’s baby would look like.”

Jack squints. “‘Kay,” he says, flatly, hands on his hips. “Guess that sorta thing falls right into your wheelhouse, huh?”

Rhys opens his mouth, then closes it again. “It was an email forward,” he defends, thinly, when Jack raises his eyebrows. “Everybody in the department was doing it.”

“Uh-huh. Sandra from accounting jumps off a bridge, you gonna do that too?” Jack steps forward to take a good look around. His elbow, still akimbo, clips through Rhys’s sleeve as he brushes past, and it makes Rhys shy back with a shiver. Jack doesn’t notice. “Jeeesus, kid.” He whistles. “I knew you were bare bones, here, but— _woof_.”

Rhys turns to watch him, crossing his arms tight over his chest. “It’s not that bad.”

 _It is, though,_ he has to admit, privately, glancing over the mess. Even after his frantic, three-day cleaning binge. (He’d considered taking even longer, out of stubborn reluctance to seem like he’d tried too hard, and primping the mess back into something a little more breezy and effortless— but it really wasn’t necessary. As hard as he tried to organize, it looked effortless all on its own.)

There just isn’t enough _space_. And the dusty light filtering in from the cracks around the doorway and the open gash up by the ceiling, where the corrugated steel of the shipping containers had been too warped to join— and where now, Rhys notes, dismally, the tendril of a vine has started creeping its way in, for no evolutionary reason that he can fathom— only serves to make it all look smaller, and worse.

There’s a carpet, but it’s shabby and cheap— free, actually, Rhys found it by a pond— curling against all the walls and threadbare in the middle, so worn that the color no longer has a name. Jagged metal stabs out edgewise from every corner; a result of Rhys’s poor welding job, and one for which his knees have paid the blood price more than once. And every surface is covered in papers. Unrolled blueprints on the three-legged tables, stacked and layered so high he had to weigh down the coiling ends with several rocks and one carton of bullets; reclaimed documents, smudged with ash, crisp and brown where fire ate their edges, pinned carefully to the walls so they don’t crumble; full reams, blank and hopeful, towering unsteadily in the corners. It’s like a business crawled into a cave, and then exploded.

“No, for real,” Jack says, like he’s waiting for the punchline. “You live like this?” He leans forward to squint at the labels peeling off of Rhys’s second most broken filing cabinet, and makes a noise of pity. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had digs like this before. You should’ve seen, back home— and when I was real low on the food chain, that was rough— but Rhys, baby, come on. You’re the _boss man_. Step it up.”

Rhys’s shoulders hunch, and he wraps his fingers around his upper arm. “Yeah, well. We don’t all get a blank checkbook to build our own space station, Jack.”

Jack crosses his arms, looking at him. “What, you need money? I got money.”

“Yeah, r— wait, you’re serious?” Rhys gives him a disbelieving look. “Uh. Hasn’t that been, like…” He waves a hand, looking for the word. ”Liquidated?”

“Nope,” Jack says, hopping up to sit on a table. It’s piled with junk, but it passes right through him, undisturbed. He grips the edge, anyway, like he needs to balance. “Changed my will right after my kid got murdered. New one just said _‘I don’t plan to die.’_ ”

Rhys lets his mind skip right over the first part, because it seems like the smart thing to do. “Jack,” he says, equal parts exasperated and, reluctantly, intrigued, “your last will and testament just says ‘ _Not Applicable’?_ ”

Jack shrugs, gaze wandering around the room again. “Can’t account for where the Hyperion cash ended up, but I got a couple trillion of my own dollars bricked up offshore on one of the Edens.” Rhys chokes. “Should be enough to get you started. Y’know. A little seed money.”

“Okay, look,” Rhys says, weakly. He shakes his head to clear out the dollar signs. “Not that I don’t appreciate the, uh, venture capitalism—”

“Love to support local businesses.”

“— _but_ , let’s just— pump the brakes, okay? It’s not like I can just waltz in with a wheelbarrow and cash out.” It’s tempting, though. Imagining what he’d do with that kind of money. Nostalgic greed stirs in his hindbrain like an appetite, and it makes him feel like he’s breathing filtered air again, walking on sheet metal and seeing inky space through the windows. It creeps him out. “So don’t, like… get my hopes up.”

“Well, no. _You_ couldn’t,” Jack agrees, thoughtful, mulling over the words. And the implication is so obvious, even with his tone— and that obnoxious expression, artificially stumped— that Rhys gives him a withering look.

“Don’t push it, Jack,” he warns. “You can’t _bribe_ me.”

Jack hums, noncommittal— _oh, I definitely can_ , Rhys hears, gritting his teeth— and feigns interest in an open blueprint beside him, kicking his legs; they swing clear through the scrap metal stuffed awkwardly under the table.

“Could you get down from there?” Rhys asks, suddenly irritated. “You’re kicking Dumpy.”

“I’m _what?_ ” Jack says. He looks down between his legs at the floor, and then hops off to lean over for a better look. “Oh, christ. Don’t tell me you actually kept that thing.”

Rhys fans him out of the way, and he steps aside. “Yes,” he says, stubbornly unembarrassed. “I _did_.” He links his arms around the mangled steel carcass and drags it out into the open, wincing just a little at the teeth-aching shriek of scraping metal— _aww,_ _it’s like he’s still here_ — and gives the battered chassis a fond pat. “He’s my buddy.”

“Holy shit,” Jack says, leaning back against a spare bit of wall. He watches, critical, while Rhys struggles to lift the hunk of shrapnel onto the filing cabinet for safekeeping. “Babe… you’ve seriously been alone for too long.”

Rhys is ready to retort— he’s not alone, _actually_ , he has plenty of friends— but Jack is off the wall in a flash, stalking intently to the other end of the office. Rhys leans, trying to see what he’s beelining for, and has to overcorrect when Jack’s sudden, barking laugh startles him into nearly losing balance.

“Oh my _god_ , kitten— this is _priceless_.” Rhys realizes immediately what he’s talking about; it’s the only thing propped against that corner. He couldn’t find a good place to hide it. His face heats up, even before Jack turns around to look at him, eyes bright and mocking with accusation, pointing towards the wall like a cartoon bully mirthfully settling on a target. “Did you use a _stamp_ for this? Like, from a craft store?”

Rhys wishes he could muscle past Jack’s projection, instead of having to step directly through him. It was distasteful enough when Jack was an AI with no sense of personal boundaries, but it’s even worse when he looks mostly solid; the code doesn’t just flicker like it used to. Instead, Jack’s image overlaps, flat and warped across Rhys’s clothes, like he stood up in the middle of a movie.

“No,” Rhys mutters, grabbing the shotgun from where it’s leaning against the wall. He clutches it to his chest with both hands, pressed back against the wall and staring down instead of looking at Jack’s face. “... It was a stencil.”

He considers the gun, grimly, while Jack laughs so hard it sounds like he might puke. It’s Hyperion-made, unmistakably; even with the cramped, white lettering etched in a messy diagonal across the barrel, declaring it to be _ATLAS_. Rhys’s first attempt at branding. The _Company Man_.

It was… symbolic, okay? It wasn’t a _product plan._ He wasn’t gonna _sell it_.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

——

Jack’s there, now, usually, when Rhys wakes up.

It was alarming, the first day. He stumbled out into the main room with his toothbrush still hanging from his mouth, buttoning the top button of his dress shirt, saw Jack waiting, and backpedaled so fast he bashed his head against the doorframe. He had to scrabble blindly for the knob, stars vibrating across his vision, while Jack launched into a merciless color commentary on his failures and the way his ass looked in those boxers.

Then it was a little daunting. He took to cracking open his bedroom door and peeking through, carefully slicing the pie, just to get tabs on where Jack was floating on any given morning.

“Yeah, whoa, _surprise_ , I’m here,” he announced once, making Rhys jump. He didn’t even look away from the blueprints Rhys had taped up to the wall the day before. “Where I always am. Just come out, you look like an idiot.”

But by now, today, it’s just routine.

“Hey,” Rhys says, groggy, scrubbing at his unkempt hair as he emerges from his bedroom. He’s fully dressed, down to his smart, sharp-toed boots, but he’s not _desperate_. Besides, he’s almost out of pomade. ( _Well,_ he’d rationalized tiredly, after ten minutes of staring at the nearly-empty jar and debating scraping the sides clean with his razor, _no point looking good for the dead._ ) He pulls the door firmly shut behind him, and makes a path for the coffee machine.

“Sucks you can’t turn this on before I’m up,” he yawns, voice still sticky with sleep. “Would go a long way towards justifying that piece of junk.” He shakes in a few spoonfuls’ worth of grounds, and tilts his head backwards towards the projector, spitting out its steady stream of light.

“I’ve been wondering about that, actually,” Jack says, from the other side of the office. “Since I’m obviously not passing muster as a butler. What’s your angle?”

Rhys pauses in the middle of eyeballing the water left over from yesterday, wondering if he _has_ to go get more, and glances over. “You mean, why’d I install it?” Jack is hovering an inch or so off the ground, bent nearly in half to squint down at some paper at the top of one of the floor stacks. “It’s just easier to work this way,” Rhys says, frowning. “I don’t have to stop and type at you all the time. What’re you looking at?”

“Longbow patents,” Jack replies. As if reflexively, he reaches out to flip the topmost page, and looks murderous when his fingers pass right through. _Fifth time today_ , Rhys figures; he’s gotten familiar with the rate at which Jack’s patience frays. “Son of a—”

“I’ll get it,” Rhys says, switching the coffee machine on before he goes. He reaches for the corner of the sheet— then instead, lifts the whole packet to his face and scans it over. “You know, I was looking at these,” he muses, thumbing through to the diagrams on page six. “The other day.”

Jack crosses his arms, the only visible sign of his impatience. “Yeah? That’s cool. Think I can get a turn?”

Rhys hums, distracted, and runs his fingertip down the itemized list of parts. His nose scrunches slightly while he thinks.

“Basic kindergarten stuff here, sweetheart. Sharing is caring, don’t eat your boogers—”

“What?” Rhys rolls his eyes when he sees Jack’s expectant, raised eyebrows. “Okay, fine. Relax.” he uses his thumbnail to pick out the staple, flicking it onto the floor— Jack looks unimpressed— and steps back to spread the papers across the flattest part of the nearest desk.

Jack pores over the documents. Rhys pours a cup of coffee. He leans with his hip against the least wobbly corner of the card table next to the holo-projector, stirring in his powdered creamer, and considers Jack’s hunched-over back.

At length, Rhys lets his spoon clink against the edge of his mug, breaking the silence. “Um, just wondering— didn’t you want to work on the snipers some more today? We didn’t have Longbows on the schedule.”

“Busy,” Jack replies, without turning around. “You got it covered.”

Rhys blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

 _Well… fine, then._ Rhys can entertain himself. And he can certainly handle a few measly sniper mods. All he has to do is draft the plans for an upgraded scope. Piece of cake. It’s mostly his ideas, anyway; maybe that’s what Jack seems pissed about. He insisted pretty hard that lab-grown crystal was the only viable option, but Rhys wanted to try out this Pandoran glass-grinder he’d heard about in New New Haven. It’s cheaper, at this quantity, easier, and— though Rhys didn’t argue this part— more… neighborly, if it ends up working out. He at least wants to give them a chance to participate.

_We can both be “busy.”_

He taps his pencil eraser on the blank schematic, and thinks.

An hour later, he’s on his third cup of coffee, and the only thing he’s managed to get on the paper is an illustrative doodle of a bandit getting his mask blown off from six hundred yards away (distance helpfully labeled). His pencil disappeared as soon as he put it down: probably under the table, and he doesn’t feel like leaning over to rummage around for it. Instead, he spins idly in his chair, sipping from his mug and watching Jack… do whatever Jack does.

Right now, his fingertips are digging into his broad jaw, right across the seam of his mask, gaze and attention hopping from page to page of the Longbow plans. He hasn’t spoken at all, except under his breath, and he hasn’t written anything down. He can’t, anyway— but it’s like he doesn’t even need to. Rhys imagines Jack’s brow, drawn down and tight in concentration, and tongues at a dry crack in his lip, wondering how one person can hold so much in their brain.

“Hey,” Rhys says, suddenly conversational, thumb rubbing the handle of his mug. Jack tenses, and his hand drops; it’s almost like he forgot Rhys was there. “There’s something I’m curious about.”

“Hm,” Jack grunts.

“Can you eat in there? In the computer?” Rhys asks, head tilting. “Or drink? Like, coffee, or whatever. If you made a machine.”

Jack gives Rhys a sidelong look, and then turns to actually face him, crossing his arms. “Nah,” he admits, after a moment of deliberation. “Tried a few times. Food and stuff.” The corner of his mouth curls down. _Right_ — Rhys remembers the pizza. “It’s got the texture, but it tastes like zilch. You ever eaten sushi with a head cold? Friggin’ nasty.”

“Oh,” says Rhys. He thinks about that, and takes a sip from his mug. “That sucks.”

——

Sooner than later, Rhys has to go resupply.

“I guess you’ll mostly be in the computer while I’m gone,” he says, shrugging on his patchwork coat, “but take care of the place, okay? No wild parties. Haha.”

“Funny,” Jack says, arms crossed. He watches, looking perplexed, while Rhys hooks the bandit mask onto the crown of his head.

“But you know what I mean,” Rhys says. He looks Jack in the eyes, with the hard implication of an _actual_ ground rule. “If I come back and see you blew my shit to smithereens...” he trails off, pressing the folded-flat duffel bag under his arm.

“Yeah, I get it.” Jack rolls his eyes. “You’ll kick my ass. I’m terrified.”

“You should be.”

“Uh-huh. Have fun.”

Rhys double checks the lock behind him, and though Jack can’t get out— and though there are no windows, still, for him to look out of— Rhys walks another dozen, discreet yards past his usual departure point, until his shack is safely out of line of sight. He has to recalibrate his device’s coordinates to compensate, and his stomach drops a little when he warps; he’s never _certain_ that he’s totally right. He always has a nagging fear that he’ll rematerialize with his legs going straight through a barstool.

He really ought to figure out _exactly_ how this works, Rhys thinks, as he pulls the mask down over his face and walks through the scrap-metal arches that welcome him to the commune of Sun’s Cradle.

It’s only supposed to be a quick trip, for essentials. He needs food, and toiletries, and— he makes a note again, because he keeps forgetting— a sewing kit. But Vaughn is here, and free, and Rhys remembers that he misses his company. So he stays the night.

“You just missed the girls,” Vaughn tells him, over a round of drinks— Sasha’s horrible moonshine, for him, but Rhys is sticking carefully to water. “Fiona wanted updates? Something about a— “

“A map,” Rhys finishes, morosely. “Yeah, I know.”

“So what’s the deal with that?” Vaughn leans back, one arm slung over his side of the booth, and takes a drink. “Secret bunker? Buried treasure?”

“Kind of,” Rhys begins, and slumps forward between his elbows on the table, poking at the condensation his glass has left on the splintered wood. He traces out an arc. “She thinks it leads to... a Vault.”

The curious ease leaves Vaughn’s expression; he drops his arm, and looks at Rhys, openly alarmed. “ _What?_ She’s— I mean— if _anyone_ — you’d think— “

“Yeah,” Rhys says, tiredly. “I know.”

Vaughn clutches his cup with both hands, tense with an uncertainty that doesn’t suit him, anymore. “Does she… really want to get involved in that stuff again, bro? I mean— do _we?_ ”

Rhys is quiet for a long while, considering. “I wanna help her, dude. I think... she needs this.”

There’s a silence, while they both think. Then Vaughn exhales, an explosive, weighty sigh, and he shrugs. “Well… I guess it could be fun.”

——

Rhys goes home the next morning with more than he planned for. Sasha figured out how to recreate the cryo gunk, and left a whole bunch with Vaughn for him to pick up. _Works better than an AC_ , her note said, _and maybe you can even learn to cook._ So he actually grabbed some perishables, this time, and Vaughn loaned him an extra bag to carry it all. It takes two trips, but really, that’s okay.

To Rhys’s surprise, Jack is in the room when he unlocks the door, kicked back on Rhys’s swivel chair and staring at a doc they left open on the computer. He jerks his head around when Rhys walks in, and judging by his expression, he’s just as surprised to see him.

“Wait,” Jack says, as Rhys unloads his first over-burdened bag onto the carpet, and turns back for the second one. “Why the hell are you back already?”

“What?” Rhys says. He’s prepared for himself for this, and it tamps down his nerves. “I got everything I needed.”

Jack leans forward, in a way that should make the chair squeak, but it doesn’t. “Don’t bullshit me, Rhys,” he says, eyes narrowed, like he’s sussing out a puzzle. “You said this place was up near Sawtooth. The crash should be a three day hike, at least. What, they install a bullet train after I died?”

One last time, Rhys weighs the pros and cons of showing this particular card. “No,” he says, finally, and nearly as boldly as he wishes. “I got there with... my Vault tech.”

Jack’s eyes go bright, aroused with some strange, artificial life-light from within him. It makes Rhys’s stomach somersault. “I knew it,” he says, quiet and triumphant. He sounds vindicated— like his first guess at the puzzle _was_ right, and there was just a piece unfairly missing all along. His artificial fingers flex through the arms of the chair. “Ohhh, haha, I _knew_ it— your _smart bullet_ crap, I told you you could use this shit for travel. I _called_ it. Ho-ho-holy crap, pumpkin, do you know what this means?” He stands, and Rhys can _feel_ his excitement, the energy buzzing off of him in waves, an electric crackle so tangible that it could almost distort his image.

“What, Jack?” Rhys says, patient, while he starts unpacking. It gives him an excuse to look away. He tugs open one of the filing cabinet drawers, and empties out the papers. “What does it mean?”

“Forget cross country.” Jack paces while Rhys lines the drawer with Sasha’s cryo packets, careful to use his metal hand. It’ll make a good enough refrigerator. “How about _planets?_ You wanna zip over to Aquator for a day trip? No problem, sweetheart! We got you covered.”

Rhys looks up at him, finally, skeptical and tired. The travel takes it out of him, even if he barely has to walk. “ _‘We’?_ ”

“Atlas,” Jack says, promptly. And he smiles. “ _Atlas_ has you covered.”

Rhys sighs. “Jack… you don’t even know how it works.” He’ll unpack the rest tomorrow, he thinks. It’s just hair gel and coffee grounds.

“Well, c’mon then, babe.” And still, Jack’s eyes— as much as they can, clouded over with that blue that makes Rhys feel so funny, only halfway opaque— they sparkle, with the light of possibility. It’s amazing, what technology is capable of. “Explain it to me.”

——

It’s getting hotter.

A morning comes when it must be pushing 90, and even in the shade of the cliff, the office _roasts_. Rhys can’t justify the discomfort anymore; a full suit sounds like torture, and he loves himself a little more than that. So he walks out in something a little lighter.

“Wow,” Jack snorts, when he glances over. “Nice t-shirt.”

“Thank you,” Rhys says, loftily, smoothing his flesh hand over the letters spelling ATLAS, red on black, across his chest. “Branding is important.”

But something catches Jack’s eye when Rhys moves, and he squints, hard and sudden. His gaze chases the movement of Rhys’s hand. “What’s on your arm, pumpkin.”

Rhys’s skin prickles. He considers playing dumb— _elbow rivet? It’s always been there—_ “Uh… y’know. Tattoo?”

“Okay,” Jack says, drawing out the second syllable. The way he stalks towards Rhys makes him acutely, frozenly aware of all the skin he has exposed. The hair on the back of his neck stands up, but he plants himself in place, letting Jack circle him, not turning around.

“Now _that_ ,” Jack purrs, from over his shoulder, voice so close to Rhys’s ear it makes him flinch, “is interesting.”

“Not— not really,” Rhys says, around a dry crack in his voice. He clears his throat. “It’s just…”

“Just what?” Jack asks. He’s at Rhys’s side now, face too close to his arm, his bare skin, and Rhys _knows_ he can’t feel his breath when he speaks, but it still makes goosebumps bloom across his flesh— “Just some sick ink?” He exhales. “Oh, Rhysie. You’ve been holding out on me.”

Jack tries to touch— to hold it up, to see the underside. His fingers pass through, just like with the paper, but he looks more pensive than exasperated, this time. His eyes flick up, expectant.

Rhys lifts it himself.

Jack takes the invitation. He brushes over the block of blue, dragging his ghost fingers along the tender flesh of Rhys’s inner arm. Rhys shuts his eyes— but even still, he can tell; he can _feel_ , he’s sure, exactly which curves and gaps Jack is tracing, so thoughtfully and slowly.

Rhys doesn’t know why he says what he says, next. It isn’t in the plan.

“It, uh... goes all the way up.”

Jack looks up at him, sharp and solid. For a moment, the only sound is the low, electric hum of the powerline connected to the roof, and Rhys’s heartbeat, louder than his breathing.

“Show me.”

Rhys crosses his arms over his stomach, and peels off his Atlas shirt, gripping it tight in his metal arm. Somehow, that meager loss is enough to make even the hot air feel abruptly cool against the sheen of sweat on his skin.

Jack stands in front of him now, and drinks him in. His eyes wander, narrow and curious, over the puddle of blue staining Rhys’s chest, trickling down his side, the pinwheel of sharp spikes pointing downwards across his ribs.

He lifts a hand, and drags his palm down the plane of Rhys’s chest, calloused thumb— _calloused?_ Rhys thinks, _why do I—_ cutting through the color.

Rhys shivers, and Jack drops his hand.

“You get this yourself?” Jack asks, and it feels sudden. Rhys inhales, like he’s been holding his breath.

“Yeah,” Rhys says, And he steps back, and shakes out the wrinkles he’s clutched into his sweaty shirt, to put it back on. “In college. What do you mean?”

Jack hums, watching him. “College, huh.” There’s something new in his gaze, now; like before, when Rhys told him about the Vault, and got filed into a brand new mental folder. Another layer of consideration. “So you’re, what. Just a big fan of Sirens?”

Rhys finishes pulling his shirt over his chest, and looks at him, puzzled. “Siren tattoos don’t look like this,” he says. And though Jack’s eyes narrow at the firmness in his voice, he doesn’t say anything in return.

——

The next day, Jack isn’t there.

“Hello...?” Rhys calls out, after checking all the corners. He looks to the projector; there’s no light filtering through the dust. “I’m, uh, up? Anybody home?”

There’s a message waiting for him on the monitor.

 **> yeah, i hear you.**  
**> i’m staying in today.**  
**> oh, okay**  
**> why?**  
**> getting some actual work done.**

Rhys glances from the screen to the tower, where the cord is still plugged in, curled neatly atop it.

 **> all right.**  
**> can i come in?**  
**> be my guest.**

This time, there’s no fire. Rhys falls into Jack’s world without fanfare, just his boot heels clicking lightly onto the marble as he lands. All his angry craters have been buffed away; the books are back on their shelves. The balls, though, are still scattered across the floor, and his golden tendril still reaches for the ceiling.

Jack is on his uncomfortable leather couch, feet propped up on a— new, Rhys notes, and ostentatiously ugly— coffee table. He’s leaning forward, typing rapidfire on a laptop, balanced on his thighs.

And more interestingly— he’s casual, for once. Same pants, but a thin t-shirt, butter yellow and tight across his chest where it says _Hyperion_. Rhys can’t help but wonder if it’s a deliberate counterplay.

“Hey,” Rhys says, walking over to the the back of couch. He tilts his head, trying to read the screen. “What’re you working on?”

“Longbows,” Jack says. “Got an idea.” His fingers fly across the keyboard, never pausing, even while he speaks.

His hair is slightly mussed, Rhys notices; one brown lock, hanging down across his forehead. Altogether, it’s a look he hasn’t seen before. “You make me feel overdressed,” he says, wryly. And he does; his suit feels oddly stifling, for some reason.

Finally, Jack ends with a decisive _clack_ of a keystroke, and looks up, over his shoulder. He smiles, with his teeth, and gives Rhys a slow, deliberate onceover. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, sweetheart. You look just fine to me.” Rhys steels his muscles, to stop himself from squirming. “Sit.”

Rhys’s boots echo as he walks around the couch to do as Jack says, leaving the middle cushion empty between them. He puts his hands on his knees.

Jack turns the laptop. “Homing upgrade. Whatcha think?”

Rhys leans forward, squinting. Jack thumbs the trackpad, scrolling down the document; it’s pages upon pages of modifications. Polished and brilliant.

“You copied the Vault tech,” Rhys murmurs. “You… what, _deduced_ it?”

“Yep,” Jack says, satisfied, pulling the laptop back. “And let me tell you, it was friggin’ seamless. Works perfect with these puppies.”

Rhys stares at him. “Fuck,” he breathes. “I hate you.” He rubs his metal hand down his face. “Effortless son of a _bitch._ ”

Jack laughs. “What can I say? It’s natural talent.” He leans back against the couch, cracking his neck. “Gotta keep busy somehow, kitten. Since you won’t let me work on the fun stuff.”

Rhys leans back, too. “Oh, yeah? Like what,” he asks. He feels mentally blinded, by that bright, exposed sunburst of Jack’s genius.

“Oh, y’know,” Jack replies, lightly. “Your _actual_ Vault magic. The Dahl crap. My literal, biblical resurrection.”

Rhys looks at him. “In that case,” he says, slowly. “I’m glad you’re keeping busy.”

“Yep,” Jack says. _I guess he’s not champing for a fight_ , Rhys thinks, warily thankful. “So you want these plans on your ECHO, or just straight to the computer?”

Rhys glances back to the computer, brow furrowed. “Jack,” he says, instead of answering. “Why are you doing this? Why are you— helping, so much?”

Jack meets his gaze, and, try as he might, Rhys can’t find anything threatening in its two-colored depths. “I’m on your team now, babe,” he says, and he sounds sincere. “I’m Atlas, through and through.”

There’s a pause, and they both glance down at Jack’s shirt. “Ignore the branding,” he adds.

“Seriously, Jack,” Rhys says, exasperated. He just— wants the truth, no bullshit. Whatever it is. “You won’t try to rebuild? From in here, or— I mean. You’re _not_ gonna want back in the ring? Against my, clearly, _massively_ overfunded campaign?” He purses his lips. “You know exactly what I’m working with. I’d be— chum in the water.”

Jack sighs, and scrubs a hand through his hair. Rhys understands why it looks so messy, now. “What’s the point, Atlas? You got a solid start, here. Plus, _all_ my shit. What am I supposed to rebuild with? You friggin’ cleaned me out.” He shrugs. “Not saying I won’t jockey for a name change, but…”

“Absolutely not,” Rhys says, crisply. He’s not… relieved, exactly, but— something in him relaxes. “Atlas stays. No more massive H’s in Pandoran airspace.” He crosses his legs. “That thing was an eyesore, Jack. Elpis actually looks _pretty_ , now.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jack says. He goes back to typing. “It’s all gorgeous, from three thousand miles away. Why do you think I built the frickin’ thing?”

“Grandstanding?” Rhys suggests, eyebrows raised. “To remind all of Pandora who they belong to?”

Jack makes a noise like a game show buzzer, baring a canine. “Wrong. To appreciate the view, without getting my nuts melted and-or gnawed off, by a kraggon and-or skag.” He frowns, seriously, at his laptop screen. “The other stuff was just a bonus.”

“Hm,” Rhys says, dryly, and opens his palm towards the ceiling to activate his ECHO.

They work together, in silence that’s almost companionable. Rhys pores over the data Jack sends his way, and it takes long enough that he gets comfortable without realizing it. He draws his knees up, legs on the couch, heels curled underneath him, and settles in.

Jack’s typing is a steady, soothing backdrop; so quick and constant, it’s nearly like white noise. It’s not distracting, but still, Rhys finds his gaze drifting over to stare at him, while he works.

It wasn’t just charisma, that got him to the top. It was his creativity, his style— Rhys has always understood this. But it’s so clear now, witnessing the ease with which he produces masterpieces of technology; he’s a bona fide _legend_ , and he’s doing it, right now, two feet away.

Rhys wonders how many people have seen him, like this. So absorbed, unconscious of himself. Creating. It’s not that Rhys thinks he’s special, but—

_But you are, kiddo. You’re the one he thought about for two years straight._

Rhys frowns. _Yeah, and most of that was spent crushing my larynx,_ he thinks, sternly.

_Oh, like you’re not a little into that._

Rhys makes a coughing noise, and Jack looks up, and catches him staring.

“I’m— uh, I’m done,” Rhys says, before Jack can speak. “Reading, I mean. Good stuff. So I should probably… go.”

Jack watches him, all thoughtful, considerate in a way that makes Rhys feel measured and bare. “Or you could hang around,” he says, quiet and casual.

Rhys swallows. “Why?” He flexes his metal hand, draped over his knee. His heart feels like a rabbit’s heart.

Jack’s gaze drifts down Rhys’s body, and then seems caught by the movement; the light, from the thousand sparkling crystals of the chandelier, reflecting prettily off the chrome of Rhys’s fingers. He leans in, slow, like Rhys is a small, flighty animal that he’s trying not to startle, and grasps the tip of one of Rhys’s prosthetic fingertips between his thumb and knuckle. _It_ is _calloused,_ says Rhys’s brain. It anchors him in place.

“You could show me that tattoo again,” Jack suggests.

Rhys has an idea, now, why they’re in here. It wasn’t just the Longbows.

“Jack,” he says, warningly, but his voice wavers, and he doesn’t pull his hand away.

“Or I could show you mine.”

Rhys stares at him, and his eyes feel wider than he’d like. “Y-you have…” He swallows, and leaps before he looks. His flesh hand reaches out, and touches the little geometric pattern on Jack’s wrist, just the barest brush against his skin. “More than this?”

“One or two,” Jack says. His control is perfect; there isn’t even a hint of the nerves galloping through Rhys’s system, on his face. He smiles, like it’s effortless. “Hidden depths, babe.”

Rhys has to snap the tension. He has to, or he’ll die. “Don’t tell me you have an ass tattoo,” he mutters, though he can’t quite manage to laugh around it.

Jack does it for him. His laugh is low and smooth, like hot chocolate, and he lets go. His hand goes back to the keyboard. “I’m not gonna give away the surprise.” His eyes stay fixed on Rhys's, bright and challenging. And it feels like hanging over open space again; blackness, stars and planets, and nothing safe to land on.

Rhys unplugs without saying a word.

——

These are shark-infested waters.

He reminds himself of this, as he stares up at the spiderweb he knows is on the ceiling of his bedroom, even in the dark.

Jack knows what he’s doing. Rhys knows, too.

It’ll be worth it, in the end.

The problem is, how worth it it feels _now_.

——

The next morning, Jack is still inside.

 _That’s fine_ , Rhys thinks. They don’t have to work together, every day.

He sits at the computer, fingers flexed above the keyboard, and thinks of what to say.

 **> hey.**  
**> hey yourself.**  
**> weird question**  
**> but outside your office, there was this painting**  
**> and it had a map behind it.**  
**> do you remember?**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [more beautiful illustration by my girl @everkinged!!!](https://twitter.com/everkinged/status/1128936031284277248)
> 
>  
> 
> "that doesn't sound right, but i don't know enough about horses to dispute it." -- rhys and jack, equally stupid
> 
> thank you all so much for your patience. the roughest parts of this month are behind me (knock on wood), so now i'm just getting my momentum back! i'm sorry for the gap, and thank you truly for sticking around. hope you enjoy! <3


	7. High Frequency Trading

“I’m going out,” Rhys says. He pulls his gloves over his fingers, wiggling them into the soft leather. There are still a few things he indulges in. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Supply trip?” Jack calls back, the same way he does every time. He’s by the door to Rhys’s bedroom, arms crossed, leaning in a way that makes his side clip through the metal of the wall. He lifts a hand to wave over his shoulder, without looking. “Have fun,” he says, songlike. “Bring me home a pretty souvenir.”

“Sure,” Rhys answers. “I will.” But he won’t, because that isn’t where he’s going.

The Dahl bunker was tricky to relocate at first, half-buried as it was in the mud of the rocky meadow, lit only by the pale light of Elpis through the clouds. The coordinates Rhys saved when he’d found it with the girls were out in the empty grass, some thirty yards away. The first time he returned, it took nearly half an hour of grappling blindly through the darkness before he slammed his toes against the steel handle of the hatch and tripped, swearing, onto his knees.

He considered planting some kind of discreet flag; like marking a little pixel landmine. Instead, he settled for just updating his device; the tiniest adjustments in latitude and longitude, so that now— this time— when he arrives, he’s right on top of it.

The hatch opens easily enough to a yank from his metal arm. The shriek of disuse has Rhys scanning the horizon for glowing eyes, shotgun tucked under his armpit where he can’t use it, even if he needs to. But he’s in, like always, quick enough to pull it closed before anything on Pandora seems to care.

His boots slip on the ladder’s coat of crumbling rust. It leaves stains on his nice gloves, like it always does, and he pauses underneath the bottom rung to flick off every flake with his fingernails, like he always does.

There are a few things, after all, he still indulges in.

Once he’s in the server room, Rhys props open the swinging door, to allow a little air flow. He’s not sure how much it helps; every room in this place is muggy with years of stagnant dust. He steps carefully between the scattered papers he left laid out across the floor to the him-shaped hole in the middle of it all, and picks up where he left off.

He sits cross-legged, surrounded by the blueprints; his ECHO hand spread wide, palm-up, displaying all available data about the Field Reconstruction System he could scrub from every resource he found that even mentioned it. There isn’t much. This is one card Dahl played awfully close to their chest.

_It needs a catchier name,_ Rhys thinks to himself, idly, scrolling through the scant information he could scavenge off the ECHOnet, and the bits and pieces of Hyperion’s datamining and reverse engineering. _New-U Station,_ Jack suggested. That’s the name Hyperion was going to use, if they ever managed to bootleg it. Rhys thinks it sounds painfully stupid.

For now, just in his mind, and kind of shyly— he’s calling it the Lazarus Machine. _Trademark: Atlas_.

It _is_ for Atlas, after all. That’s why he’s here. Jack has— well, not _nothing_. Rhys can’t lie to himself quite so plainly. But Jack has only a little to do with it. And that little is completely strategy.

This is just… important, on its own. Make-or-break shit. It’s the sort of tech that can corner a market, hard, and then _literally_ bring it back to life to keep on buying. Not to mention the humanitarian considerations. It’s what he wants, for Atlas— to help people. To improve lives. To _save_ lives.

And, anyway— he doesn’t see Dahl around to complain. Or Hyperion, for that matter.

_That should probably feel like a warning,_ Rhys thinks, glancing up at the spread wings of the busted machine. _Look upon my works, and all that crap._ But here— private and safe, bridging the gap between two failed competitors— Rhys is fine just feeling smug, for now.

He unscrews the broad panel on the station’s front. It pops open, exposing the wiring. “Great,” he groans, dragging his hand across his forehead. The motherboard is massive. There’s probably a hundred ports, and they’re all empty. A dozen bundles of wires, zip-tied into rainbows, lay disconnected against the steel interior, tangled in an evil Gordian knot of technology. A single, pounding ache darts between Rhys’s temples. He turns back to the blueprints, feeling slightly hopeless.

He’s pretty sure he understands the _basics_ of how it works. A soldier forks over a tiny smear of DNA— and there’s an interface for that, halfway down the outside; a hole to stick your finger in, to touch a covered needle, looking as harmless and as cheerful as a vending machine— and when they inevitably die, the machine uses the saved sample to digistruct a copy of their body. Boom, new soldier. Well, no— same soldier, actually. Same mind, same instinct, same money already invested in their training and deployment. New _body_ , free of leaking holes, with all its blood back where it’s supposed to be.

He gets why Jack would want it. Even before things got personal.

_It just needs the dust blown off,_ Rhys tells himself, bracingly optimistic. He reaches inside with the screwdriver to try prying out the hard drive. Some tune-ups here, a shiny new coat of paint there. And maybe a few upgrades, if Rhys can figure out how he feels about that.

Dahl’s design was fairly… nuts and bolts. Military. Practical. Hyperion had some interesting ideas, if he’s reading their hopeful mock-ups right, and—

His ECHO pings with an incoming call. He drops the screwdriver into the guts of the machine.

“Shit.” Rhys looks at the caller ID, and grimaces. He hesitates for a second, then twitches his pinky towards his palm to answer. “Uh, yeah?”

“Hello,” Sasha sings. “You in the office? I can’t see anything.” He’s far enough underground that her ID is a static image, rather than a video.

“Yeah,” Rhys says, wincing at the little pang of guilt. _Add it to the pile_. “Reception’s been pretty spotty here, lately. You, um, need something?”

“Not really,” she says. “I’m not interrupting you, am I?”

“No, actually,” Rhys answers, sticking a screw into the corner of his mouth so he doesn’t lose it. He talks around it, and goes fishing for the screwdriver. “I was meaning to call you, anyway.”

“Yeah? What for?” He hears a tap, like Sasha’s poking at her screen. “Honestly, I was just calling to say hi. So you go first.”

“I’m gonna send you a file, okay?” He waves his finger to tab out of the call. “So stop playing _Candy Crush_ for a second.”

“Ooh, okay,” she says. The tapping stops. “I’m ready.”

Rhys activates his eye. His mechanical iris rounds out, like he’s focusing on something new and invisible, far closer than the colored, knotted wires he’s been staring at. His lashes, ringing half his field of vision, light up soft with gold. A muscle in his cheek twinges; this isn’t quite as fluid as it used to be. It only hurts a little bit, though. And he’s used to it.

He uploads the file. Transfering takes slightly longer than it should; it lingers at 99%, stuck in the craw of the bunker’s poor connection.

Sasha inhales when it arrives. He hears her sit up. “No way— you got it? For real?”

“Yep,” Rhys says, deactivating his eye. He spits the screw into his palm. “Finally, right? One treasure map, straight from me to you.” He smiles, even though she can’t see it.

“Rhys,” Sasha says, and the tremor in her voice makes his heart hurt, in a nice way. “Thank you. Really, she’s gonna be— this helps. You know? A lot.”

“Haha,” he says, lamely. “No problem.” He’s not good at this— emotional stuff. It makes him feel awkward and sorry, for reasons he can’t quite pin down. “You, uh.” He clears his throat. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m good. Thank you, Rhys. Seriously, I— _we_ owe you one.”

“It’s fine, dude. Glad I could help. And, uh— good luck, I guess?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she says, and laughs, a little wry. Even without the video, he can see her tuck her hair behind her ear. “You’ll know exactly how it goes.”

Their conversation is brief, after that. Sasha’s usual, easy small talk is strained against her eagerness to spill the good news to Fiona. Rhys can hear it, in the way her voice drifts sideways from the receiver, like she’s craning her neck to stare out of the window. When the caravan’s door busts open— _Fiona probably kicked it_ , he thinks, fondly, when he hears the bang, _for no reason at all_ — she’s already hanging up, halfway through reminding Rhys that she really, truly owes him a big favor.

_Call Ended!_ , his hand chimes. It echoes in the dull, cramped room. The too-white walls buzz with the anxious, barren flicker of fluorescent lightstrips, far past their replacement date, in a way Rhys didn’t notice when her voice was warm and full on his attention. His fingers close around the screwdriver, and he sits back on his heels.

_I’m here for a good reason,_ he reminds himself, firmly.

He can get the station working again. Rhys is sure of that. But he could also do a little more. Those Hyperion upgrades—

_Well,_ he thinks, as he leans forward to start sorting through the wires. _There’s nothing wrong with some improved functionality._

——

When his knees have gone from numb to tight and aching— tendons throbbing angrily, forced out of denial into admitting their disgust at being pressed against linoleum for hours— and the little rounded bones on the outsides of his ankles feel like they’ve definitely bruised straight through his skin, Rhys decides it’s time to head home. It’s even closer to the middle of the night than when he came, he notes, stretching; the movement wrings his spine out like a rag. A rib pops back into place and makes him wince. He’ll have to move quietly, when he crawls out, and watch his back. _Pandora loves its midnight snacks_.

He’ll come back here, soon enough. In a few days, or whenever Jack won’t miss him. He always does.

“Home already?” Jack asks, when Rhys steps in and the door clicks shut behind him. He glances over, twice, and frowns; his brow dips together, creasing the mask. “You didn’t bring any stuff.”

Rhys shrugs off his coat and folds it carefully beside the entrance. “I changed my mind,” he says, simply. He brushes past Jack on his way to the bedroom, peeling the gloves from his fingers. He doesn’t want to look at him. He’s too sore and tired to lie more than he has to. “There wasn’t anything I really needed.”

——

“I made more shirts,” Rhys says, the next time he materializes into Jack’s room. He holds one up, eyebrows raised. “Eh?”

Jack gives him a cynical look. He’s on the couch again— _like always_ , Rhys thinks. He’d suspect it was some limitation of the code, like the leather is digitally grafted to his ass, if it weren’t for the few times he’s seen Jack get excited enough to pace. His sneakers always leave hyperactive rubber scuffs across the floor, and they’re always gone by the next time Rhys pops in. “If I wanted one of your shirts,” Jack answers, dry, “I could code it in myself.”

“Well, I saved you the effort.” Rhys says, tartly, tossing it over the back of the couch. “So you’re welcome.”

Jack snorts, and doesn’t touch it. He has one ankle propped up on his knee, laptop balanced over the gap between his thighs. He’s back in his old outfit; the one from all the posters, with the long tails of his white shirt pooled against the leather. “Why don’t you explain to me what you spend your money on, Atlas. I’m curious. You even moved a unit yet?”

Rhys closes his mouth. “No,” he says, finally. “But that’s just because— I’m still working on the mods! There’s nothing _done_ , yet. And I just— I don’t wanna ship something half-assed, when I finally go to market.”

Jack looks skeptical. “Sure, if that’s how you wanna do business.” It doesn’t sound like he can see the merit. He leans forward on the couch, regarding Rhys over the screen of his laptop. “Well, then who you got lined up for manufacturing? For the guns, I mean. Not your merch.”

Rhys chews the inside of his lip. “Uh. Sasha?”

Jack stares at him, fingers drumming on the titanium beside his keyboard.

“Shut up,” Rhys groans, sinking onto the other end of the couch. _His spot_. “I know. I know! Like I said, Jack, I’m not exactly shitting gold bricks over here.”

Jack sighs, long and suffering, and bends forward to put his laptop on the coffee table. “Okay, kitten,” he says, like he’s spelling out a simple concept to a toddler. “Listen up, ‘cause I’m not gonna explain all this again. This is a free business seminar, all right? Straight from me to you. Big opportunity, here.”

Rhys crosses his arms, jaw clenching around what he wants to say. But he listens.

“Here’s what you need.” Jack leans towards him, and Rhys can’t help but watch his hands when he talks; palms spread, fingers apart, waving big and wide to illustrate each concept. “A prototype. A good one. Shiny, flashy, lots of blinking lights. Make it beep for no frickin’ reason. You following me?” He nods, though Rhys hasn’t responded. “Yeah, see, you’re already on the right track. So you sink all your costs into that. This is the crap you’re gonna stick on the show floor, make it gather dust.” He waves a hand dismissively. “Then you take it to some _other_ company— someone who’s got their own factory, so you don’t gotta build your own. And show that sucker off. Play it up. Make it beep. And then—” He cocks his head, and Rhys— when his heart skips, at the animated way a strand of hair falls past Jack’s ear— wonders, wildly, where Jack gets this easy competence. The way he burns with confidence, the way it’s so contagious; the way he moves and talks so every word he says sounds like it’s not just true, but _right_. “Then, you just cut a deal.”

Rhys frowns, resurfacing. “You mean, like, sell the prototype? I don’t want—”

“No, come on,” Jack interrupts, impatient. His hand cuts through the air, making Rhys’s teeth click shut.

Even when he’s like this, terse and mean, Rhys can’t help it. He realizes that, distantly, when he goes warm at what should make him cold; when his indignation is only a feeble lick of flame, not quite catching, this time, on the kindling. Jack tells him to shut up, and Rhys is all the more captivated.

_A real strength of his,_ observes the cutting voice inside his head _._ Like an ironic eulogy, delivered for a corpse that had it coming. _Or maybe just your weakness._

Jack looks annoyed, like Rhys is the one being impolite. “Don’t shake your head, kid, just keep up. You’re selling the _license_. Let ‘em manufacture, let ‘em distribute, let ‘em take most of the profits. You’re not gonna get much for your first crack at it— though the name might help you out, even if they do realize you’re just a copycat.” Rhys opens his mouth to say something, but Jack barrels on before he can. “I’d say fifteen perfect is the best you’re gonna manage. Don’t get your hopes up. But hell, even if you only move a couple thousand units— that fifteen is good enough to get you pumping out more prototypes. Even start saving up for a factory of your own.” He pokes out an elbow, and gives Rhys a patronizing glance. “Or maybe a real office, like the big kids. Right? Huh? A salary, one day? Dream high.”

“So,” Rhys says, turning the idea over in his mind. His brain is moving slower than it should, it feels like, with the effort of forcing his attention into place. “You want me to just… waltz into, like, Torgue HQ? And hand over all my stuff, for them to stick their name on?” The words leave a bad taste in his mouth. He thinks of his craftsmanship exploding, delicate parts flying everywhere.

“Your name stays,” Jack says. “You can negotiate for that, but it’s pretty standard. You’re building up recognition; they get that.” He laces his fingers behind his head, leaning back. “Just don’t spook ‘em into thinking you’re gonna be, like, dominating the market in five years. Which, no offense, you’re not gonna have to think too hard about.”

Rhys taps a finger against his thigh while he considers. “There’s probably a company out there,” he says, thoughtfully, “that’s jonesing for some upgraded Hyperion tech.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack agrees, eyebrows raised. “Maliwan, for one. They’ll recognize it, for sure, but that won’t be a bad thing. Say what you want about our _corporate culture_ ,” he says, pressing his head back into his hands and sneering, like he doesn’t think that’s a real thing, “but Hyperion made a damn good product.”

Rhys thinks. And then he says, “I can talk them up to thirty-five.”

There’s a pause. And then Jack laughs, way harder than Rhys thinks is necessary. “Kiddo— I like you, okay? But you could barely bargain for your _life_.”

Rhys’s jaw sets. He meets Jack’s eye, and raises his chin. “I did okay in the end,” he says. He sneers, deliberately, even as his heart beats just too fast.

Jack’s smile fades, and he regards him, hard and speculative. His gaze flicks down Rhys’s front, and then back up again. “Okay,” he answers, evenly. “Show me, then.”

Rhys blinks, expression losing its flinty edge. “Show you what?”

“I wanna see you in action.” Jack sits forward, smiling. Not very nicely. “So, let’s negotiate my compensation.” He spreads his hands across his thighs. “I want ninety percent of your company, Atlas.”

The ghost of confidence flees instantly from Rhys’s face. He feels his eyes go wide— then narrow, when Jack’s steady expression suggests it’s not a joke. “What? Jack— absolutely not.”

Jack tuts. “Awful start,” he says. “First of all, you’re supposed to say another number.”

“Okay, how’s this?” Rhys tilts closer, arms crossed. His expression is tight. He doesn’t know why he feels threatened; like if he doesn’t stop him, Jack will just take whatever he wants. “Zero. That’s a number.”

Jack looks like he pities him. Anger makes Rhys sit up straighter, shoulders hunched. “You’re really not getting into the spirit of this, kiddo,” Jack says, voice too deliberately patient to be really kind. “Negotiation is like improv. Which I have a feeling you dabbled in, in college.”

“Shut up,” Rhys hisses, face coloring. “You’ll— you would get five percent, Jack, at _most_. And it’s a moot point, anyway, because it’s not like you’re—”

“Eighty,” Jack interrupts, “and I don’t lock up the rest of the files you’re using to build your company.”

Rhys blanches. So that’s— _that’s_ how they’re gonna play this. Okay, fine! He feels like he’s rocking back on his heels, arms up, unbalanced by the feints and dodges of an opponent who’s far faster than him. At least, he thinks that’s how he feels; even now, Rhys has pathetically little experience with fistfights. “Ten,” he says, “and I don’t take those Dahl schematics and use them for target practice with your fancy new Longbows. Wait, Jack, slow down— are you really looking to be an investor?”

Jack doesn’t lose momentum, even when he takes a breath to answer. “I already invested everything you have that’s worth a shit,” he says, and Rhys grits his teeth, knowing he can’t really deny it. “Sixty-five, and— speaking of— I’ll give you the _actual_ Longbow schems.” Jack grins, showing his canines. “The ones that don’t explode when they’re unholstered,” he elaborates, voice sweet and helpful.

Rhys’s mouth falls open. More than anything— he’s angry at himself, for not even suspecting the duplicity. “You _dick_ ,” he manages, just too late to keep the rhythm. His fingers curl on his thighs. He’s up on his knees, pressed into the edge of the middle cushion, a mirror of Jack; he doesn’t know when they both sat up, so aggressive, or got so close together. “You’ll give me those no matter what. And— do I seriously have to remind you? Hyperion cannibalized Atlas _first_. Your tech was just Frankenstein’d off mine. Fifteen, and I won’t unplug your ass for trying to trick me.”

“ _Trying_ ,” Jack says, mocking. The strand of hair still hangs loose over his ear. _You’re not so perfect_ , Rhys thinks, viciously. Desperately. “Hilarious that you’re invoking the grandfather clause. If I recall correctly, _Rhysie_ , you were part of Team Cannibal.” He breathes in. They’re so much closer than feels safe, but Rhys can’t pinpoint when he should have stopped it. “Fifty-five,” Jack bites out, “and I’ll show you my tattoos.”

“Twenty,” Rhys says, feeling breathless, “And I’ll start giving you updates about the Dahl station.” Jack’s exhale feels hot across his skin. His eyes are fixed on Rhys’s mouth.

“Fifty,” Jack counters. “And I’ll take you to another Vault.”

Rhys doesn’t think he shows it, on his face. The way his heart jumps. But when he murmurs his next offer, it doesn’t really matter, either way. “Twenty-five,” he says, voice dry. “A Vault.” He swallows. “And I’ll let you kiss me.”

Something flickers behind Jack’s eyes. It leaves them a shade darker, when it’s gone. “Thirty,” he says, and his hand is on the side of Rhys’s neck, rough and warm. “Thirty. The Vault. The _kiss_ ,” he repeats. “And fuck _updates,_ Rhys— you bring me back to life.”

He closes the distance before a counteroffer can fall from Rhys’s mouth.

Jack kisses him sweet and hungry. The hand on Rhys’s neck is sturdy, ready for his reflexive tilt backwards; his hard fingers skirting just below his hairline, curling against the soft baby hairs, untouched by styling gel. He licks adrenaline from Rhys’s tongue.

_It still feels like a fight_ , Rhys thinks, madly, as Jack’s fingers tighten in his hair.

He does his best to match his opponent, but Jack’s still quicker. His mouth is hot and fast and pleasant, and it draws out every word Rhys might say to stop it, like poison from a snakebite. It swallows them down, before they even leave his throat.

That’s a lie, though, really. Rhys’s throat is so empty it hurts; there are no words he feels compelled to say.

Rhys doesn’t find his balance till Jack pushes him. His back hits the arm of the couch, hard enough to make his breath catch, and his hands go up to fist the fabric of Jack’s shirt, steadying himself, yanking him closer. Rhys tilts his head, sealing their mouths more solidly, around a noise he doesn’t care to notice that he’s making.

Jack’s thumb presses into the tender flesh under Rhys’s jaw, holding him there. A threat of a threat. It makes Rhys shiver. He arches his back, trying to taste Jack’s teeth, the way Jack’s tasting his, but Jack pulls back to bite at Rhys's lower lip, sucking just this side of too hard. Rhys tilts his head back, and breathes out a throaty sound that even he can’t make himself ignore.

The hand leaves Rhys’s neck. Jack’s arm presses against his side— his own arms have moved, too, Rhys notices, fingers clutched tight around Jack’s shoulders, skin and metal, and he can’t recall when that happened— and he realizes Jack’s now bracing himself against the couch, fully boxing Rhys in. His body’s warm and heavy, physical and authentic in a way that makes Rhys’s brain spin. _Would it feel this real, even in the real world?_ he wonders, nonsensically, as Jack exhales into him, and runs his tongue over the roof of Rhys’s mouth.

When they finally break— when Rhys pulls back, shoving at Jack’s shoulders, panting hard for air and seeing stars— Jack dips to press a wet kiss to his throat, scraping at the soft flesh with his teeth. He breathes, voice rough and satisfied against Rhys’s damp skin, “Deal.”

——

Thirty percent lost to his first investor isn’t the _rawest_ outcome.

Jack was after a majority. That much was obvious. But Rhys hasn’t survived what he has— Helios, a vault monster, getting shot at more times than really seems fair— to kiss ownership of his company goodbye.

_C’mon, babe. That joke tells itself._

Rhys can think clearly, now that Jack’s hands are off of him. “I can’t believe you gave me faulty Longbows,” he mutters. It makes him feel vaguely embarrassed, the way they’ve retreated back to opposite ends of the couch; like horny teens, caught necking in the middle of the school dance. “You’re lucky I didn’t send them to Sasha yet.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack agrees, completely casual. He’s reclining back against his own side, arms outstretched. His hair is only a little messed up. He doesn’t look nearly as wrecked and guilty as Rhys feels. “That would’ve been bad.”

“Tch,” Rhys says, squinting, but it’s half-hearted. “Yeah, for you.” He should feel so much more angry than he does. His mouth feels wet and swollen, no matter how many times he wipes at it with the back of his hand.

There’s a pause, where neither of them says anything. The tension feels weighted, like it’s all rolled to Rhys’s end of the couch.

Rhys glances to Jack. “So, um... how’d I do?” he asks, quietly. “With the negotiation,” he clarifies, quickly, when Jack raises his eyebrows. He hates the way his face burns.

“Good,” Jack says, easily. “Good enough.” He runs his thumb along his lower lip, thoughtful. And then he laughs. “But maybe don't offer Maliwan _that_.”

Rhys feels dazed. He wants to stop feeling warm; to kiss him again; to run. He doesn’t do any of it. “Well,” he says, on an exhale, leaning back, “I guess it depends on what they offer me.”

——

Rhys considers the tiny bedroom of the Dahl bunker, the next time he's there. He leans against the doorway, clutching a travel mug of coffee from his office, and imagines crawling in between the moth-eaten blankets pulled military-tight across the bunkbed. He thinks about closing his eyes, and not waking up till he feels like it.

He sighs. It looks about six inches too short for his legs.

_It would be cowardly, anyway,_ he decides. He can’t sleep here.

He should go home.

On his way out of the hatch, a skag jumps at his legs. It takes two tries to squeeze the shotgun’s trigger, but Rhys’s aim is lucky, even in the dark, and hot blood spatters all across his front.

He goes back down the ladder to clean his face off in the sink. His gloves are ruined.

——

“So, that Vault,” Rhys says, next time he’s on the couch. He stretches his legs onto the coffee table, and doesn’t feel even a little self-conscious at the way Jack lets his gaze wander down the length of them. “Let’s talk about it.”

Jack snorts. “Nah,” he says, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think I will.”

Rhys stares at him. And realizes, stomach dropping ten stories, that there’s been a monumental shift; a tectonic plate, snapping into place.

“What?” Rhys says, mouth dry.

But he understands. Jack has leverage, now.

“Here’s the thing, cupcake.” he says, like Rhys doesn’t already know the thing. Jack regards him, with none of the fondness Rhys has gotten so stupidly used to. “I’m done giving crap away for free. You want that Vault?” He tilts his head. “Get the Dahl station working, and I’ll take you right to it.”

Rhys slipped.

Not with the kiss, but with the negotiation. Unbelievably— right now— in the grand scheme of Rhys’s major fuckups, _kissing Handsome Jack_ is falling on the side of irrelevance.

The silence hangs. Then, Rhys says quietly, “You can’t extort me, Jack.”

“Yeah, though, actually,” Jack says. “I can.” His eyes narrow. “But I’m _not_. You’re giving as good as you’re getting, Rhysie— ‘cause you got something I want, too. And when we’re both extorting each other, you know what that’s called?” He uncrosses his arms enough to jab a finger in the air between them. “A _deal_.”

It’s not like he has a choice. And maybe Jack knows that; Rhys can’t tell. If it’s a calculated gambit, it’s a good one. So he says what he has to. He tells the truth.

“There’s a problem with the Dahl station,” Rhys admits. “At least, as far as you’re concerned.” He twists his mouth. “The blueprints, the way it’s designed now— it only works with a DNA sample.”

Jack doesn’t answer. Rhys swallows. “But I guess you probably knew that.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I probably did.”

He waits, after that, like he knows there’s more to hear. Of course he knows.

“I have an idea, though,” Rhys says, carefully picking through his words. And then he pauses. “Actually, _you_ had an idea. Well, Hyperion did. They drafted out an upgrade, and I think I can actually make it work—”

“What’s the upgrade?” Jack interrupts. _Results, results, results._

Rhys bites his lip. He considers. “A way to upload a mind,” he says, finally, “into a different body.”

The words hang in the air. The familiarity of the concept is uncomfortable. To Rhys, at least. Jack doesn’t seem particularly bothered. He seems—

“Nakayama’s work,” Rhys continues, “as you, um. May have gathered. I don’t know if I can get it functioning. I mean, turning code into wetware— that’s complicated stuff.” He hesitates. “But I was thinking, if we found— I don’t know, an old Atlas bot, or something—”

“Your friend,” Jack says, suddenly. “The one who runs the refugee camp, with the muscles. Vin Diesel.”

“Vaughn,” Rhys supplies, frowning; he doesn’t follow.

Jack waves a hand, dismissive. “Vaughn Diesel, then. Whatever. He keep tabs on everyone there?”

“The refugees? I mean— I think so—”

“Great,” Jack says. His voice is slow and heavy with restraint; anticipation, clearly wrestled down into patience. He stands, and starts walking circles around the couch. “Listen up. I’m gonna give you a name, all right? And I want you to go asking around. Ask your buddy if it sounds familiar.”

“Okay?” Rhys feels like he’s been lapped in a race.

“I know a guy,” Jack says. “Totally trustworthy. Bet you anything he could give us a hand.” He’s talking with his arms again, broad and excited. It could be a tell, Rhys thinks, following the sweeping gestures with his eyes, if he had any clue what it was supposed to give away.

Rhys wrinkles his nose, trying to keep pace. “What— you think he can help get the machine working?”

“Absolutely,” Jack says, with conviction. He stops, and faces Rhys, and grins. His eyes shine bright. His shoes have left fresh scuff marks on the marble floor.

He tells him the name.

——

“Hey,” Rhys says, lying in his bed. He’s alone now, in the dark again, speaking to his hand. “Sorry to call back so soon, but I’m cashing in that favor.” He breathes out, and closes his eyes. The days didn’t used to feel this long. “If you’re still near Sun’s Cradle— I need you to find a guy.”

“Timothy Lawrence,” Sasha repeats, once he’s told her. “Never heard of him. Is he important?”

“No idea,” says Rhys. “But I guess I need his help.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deepest thanks and recognition as always to @everkinged for wonderfully helpful betaing, and to @ineffmoth for invaluable advice, comradery, and commiseration! And thank you so much to everyone drawing incredible art for this fic; I can't even express how happy it all makes me. I still can't believe this is happening, haha!
> 
> Thank you all enough for your amazingly kind feedback. I'm so, so happy that you're enjoying this fic. <3


	8. Company Man

_Dear Maliwan_

Rhys’s cursor blinks. He grimaces at his computer screen.

**> terrible. sounds like maliwan is what you call your diary.**   
**> throw some swagger in there, kiddo! make ‘em wanna read it!**

Rhys holds backspace until the document is blank again. Apart from his letterhead, which is gratingly unstylized— because, in Jack’s words, “you’re not a graphic designer, idiot, and you have better things to do with your time. Stop doodling and just use Arial.”

Then, tentatively:

_Esteemed colleagues,_

This time, backspace holds itself. Words appear on the screen without him typing.

_ATTN: ASSWIPES_

Rhys sucks his teeth and deletes it immediately.

 **> jack**  
**> if you don’t stop backseat driving this**  
**> i will use the other computer**  
**> just trying to help.**

Rhys ignores him. Finally, after more deliberation, he settles on something distant, neutral, and adequate.

_To Whom It May Concern,_

_We are writing to inquire about the possibility of organizing a meeting with your production team to offer you a limited license to manufacture and market our latest firearm. We’re confident you will agree, upon consideration, that our two companies’ design principles are very much aligned, and assure you that an arrangement of this nature would be mutually beneficial and financially lucrative._

_Please find enclosed our product’s PR package and marketing materials._

_We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience._

**> does that sound okay?**  
**> it’s kind of boring.**  
**> you can’t spatter every business letter with blood, jack.**  
**> that’s a common misconception.**  
**> boring is fine. i’m sending it.**

Rhys adds a formal valediction, signs his name, and scans the text over to his palm via his ECHOeye. He sends it from his Atlas email.

 **> i guess it’s fine if i pretend you’re being patronizing.**  
**> maliwan’s a bunch of squares, anyway. they’ll probably love it.**

“Yeah,” Rhys sighs. He watches the little icon change from [sent] to [delivered]. “I hope so.”

——

Jack refuses to talk about the Vault until he sees proof that Rhys is working on the Lazarus Machine.

So Rhys spends half a day inside the Dahl bunker, setting up another projector. When that’s done, and after a frustrating quarter-hour of digging through his junk drawers, he finds a thumb drive large enough for the job of moving Jack.

Even if the bunker had grounded ECHO access, which it doesn’t, the only way Jack is getting there is in Rhys’s pocket.

 **> i’m gonna put you on a flash drive.**  
**> don’t even think about copying yourself. **  
**> i’ll be scanning this computer once i’ve unplugged the stick. if you’re still here? any trace of you?? **  
**> no field trip.**  
**> what? why?**  
**> i’m not having you replicating like a virus. or two hundred miles away with no supervision.**  
**> plus, i don’t want to come back here and repeat entire conversations just so you know what’s going on.**  
**> so you’re just gonna carry me back and forth every time?**  
**> yes?**  
**> that’s my problem. not yours.**  
**> just saying, babe**  
**> if you let me hitch a ride in your head, you won’t have to repeat a thing.**  
**> don’t even joke about that, jack. it’s not funny.**  
**> yes or no?**  
**> fine, jeez. only a suggestion.**  
**> clean transfer, no copies. crystal clear.**  
**> fascist.**

Rhys takes a last moment to reconsider. To give himself the chance to, at least. His fingers flex around the little plastic cylinder.

 **> i’m putting a lot of faith in you here, you know.**  
**> to not drop me in the toilet, or forget me in your bookbag, or slip on a banana peel and snap me in half when you land on your skinny ass.**  
**> aren’t you used to that by now? **  
**> your life being in my hands?**  
**> what a stupid question.**

 _It was,_ Rhys has to admit, plugging the empty drive into the computer. No one would get used to that. And Jack, of all people— well. It can’t be pleasant.

 **> hey**  
**> you’re not gonna leave me on there, right?**

Rhys blinks. But he doesn’t have to wonder why he asks. It makes sense, given what he’s asking him to do.

 **> just get in, jack.**  
**> it’ll be five minutes.**  
**> trust me.**

Jack slams into the drive like he’s diving into a frigid swimming pool. Rhys imagines Jack’s deep, bracing breath; cheeks puffed, rubbing his hands together for some last minute warmth; bouncing on his heels. His data slips off the computer like he’s slipping under the glass-cold water— only he can’t surface and toss his wet hair back, and laugh that it wasn’t so bad, after all. He can’t, trapped on a data drive. There’s no way for him to laugh, or speak, or surface.

Rhys unplugs it the moment the transfer is complete. He scans the computer, like he said he would, but he does it quick.

Jack kept his word. Rhys keeps his, too. It’s only five minutes before he’s at the Dahl bunker, and plugging him back in. He uploads immediately.

“Okay,” Jack says, as his hologram paces and shakes out its hands. There’s a flicker behind his blue-filtered eyes, and without him even turning to look, the monitor he’s attached to pops up its little analog clock display. “That _was_ pretty fast.”

“I told you,” Rhys says, dropping his bag of stuff.

Jack takes a deep breath, and looks at him. His nervous energy seems to settle like the soda fizz, and Rhys has to find something else to stare at. There’s something too fond in his gaze. “You sure did,” he says, and Rhys hates the way he can hear it, too.

It seems like they’ll end up staying a while, so Rhys makes a solo trip back to the office, for supplies; he comes back with a sleeve of crackers, some scuffed foil packets, and his coffee maker, tucked under one arm, cord wrapped carefully around the pot.

“Those look like they’re a million years old,” Jack says, once Rhys has piled the packets on a desk. He wrinkles his nose. “You sure they’re safe? I wouldn’t even make a rakk eat ‘em.”

They’re Dahl MRE’s; Rhys had found a stash in the bunker’s kitchenette, and— after tentatively trying what the faded, yellowed label promised was ‘tortilla soup’— had Sasha send him some more, from a military surplus store in Hollow Point. “They don’t go bad,” he answers defensively. “You’d be surprised. They’re actually pretty good.”

“Your funeral,” Jack says. “So where’s the machine?”

“Here,” Rhys says, crossing the room to sink down in front of it. He leans back, giving him room to watch, as he sticks his metal arm deep inside its guts. Using the very tips of his fingers, he pushes aside the wires he’s already reattached, exposing the surface of the motherboard, and lists off the idiosyncrasies he’s figured out with Dahl’s electrical engineering.

“I’m still doing what I can,” he says, in conclusion, “but there’s something about it that’s really goddamn confusing.”

“Let me take a look at it,” Jack says, like he’s already rolling up his sleeves.

Rhys leans back on his heels, and watches as Jack sticks his face into the wiring. “Here,” he says, activating the flashlight on his palm. It passes eerily through Jack’s head. Rhys moves his hand so it goes over his shoulder, instead.

“So,” Jack asks, from inside the machine, “you tested it out, yet?”

“I can't exactly test it, is the issue.” Rhys says.

“Why not?”

“I dunno.” Rhys frowns. “It just feels kind of… unethical?”

“Just do my idea. Stick me in a skag and kill it afterwards.”

“I am _not_ gonna do that, Jack.” Rhys gives the back of Jack’s head a dirty look.

“A little bunny, then. Jeez, I don't care.”

Rhys curls his fingers reflexively, casting shadows. “No! What? Why would I— Jesus, Jack, I'm not _you._ ”

Jack tuts. “Yeah, clearly.” But he glances back over his shoulder, with a charming, teasing smile, and Rhys rolls his eyes and props his chin in his free palm so Jack won’t see how he smiles back.

It quickly stops making sense to transfer Jack every night, for the trip. One night, when Rhys is too tired to bother packing and dragging all his crap home, he hauls the thin mattress from the bunk up the ladder, climbing with one hand, and beats the years of dust out into the grass.

The day after, Jack squats in front of the Lazarus Machine, glancing between the schematics and the exposed wiring. Rhys sits with his back against the far wall, legs straight out, tinkering with his teleporter. He needs something to do, after all, and he doesn’t much want to clip through Jack while he does it. _Too many cooks._

“What’s so important,” Jack asks, over his shoulder, when Rhys stops to pencil in a note on the sheet of drafting paper curled on the floor beside him, “that you gotta fiddle with that right now?”

Rhys looks up, surprised. “Oh, I’m— trying to reverse engineer it.” He holds up the teleporter. “I want to make another one.”

“I thought the Vault gave you the blueprints.” Jack frowns.

“Nope.” Rhys shakes his head. “Just the final product.”

“Take it apart, then,” Jack says, like it’s obvious. Rhys has just been turning it over in his hands, holding it up to the light at different angles.

Rhys blanches. “No! What? That’s nuts! What if I break it? What if I can’t put it back together again? I’d have to _walk_ back to my office, and that’s like— not to mention, it’s _important_. This baby is my cornerstone.” He strokes the glass screen with his thumb. “I’m not cracking it open.”

“You never took apart a radio? I do _not_ understand what kind of kid you were.” Jack sounds judgmental. “I’m not telling you to start, like, snapping pieces off. Grab a screwdriver and just keep track of the parts.” He comes over to give it a look. “How’s it work, anyway?”

“I don’t really know,” Rhys admits. He turns it over in his palm. “I’ve scanned it. And, I mean, I’ve used it. I get the basics.” His brow knits, as he stares down at the little steel-and-plastic rectangle. He taps the side with one finger. “Still not sure what this button does, though.”

“I could figure it out,” Jack says, matter-of-fact. “If I didn’t have better things to do.”

“Is _that_ extortion?” Rhys asks, dryly, placing the teleporter down on the paper. “Or is it just you being rude?”

“It’s the truth,” Jack says, meandering back over to the Lazarus Machine. “A: I’m a genius. And B: your passion project is pretty low on our list of priorities. Sorry, kid. It’s not like you’re selling _that_ to Maliwan.” He glances over his shoulder. “You give it a name yet?”

“No,” Rhys says, defensively. “...I’ve just been calling it _Teleporty Thing._ ”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack mutters.

Rhys’s hackles raise. He crosses his arms. “Oh, okay. Let’s see you come up with something better.”

“Teleportables,” Jack says, off the top of his head. “Intelli-Port.”

Rhys’s mouth snaps shut.

“Telepor-Station.” Jack’s voice is smug. “I could do this all day, seriously.”

“Well don’t,” Rhys grumbles. “You’re distracting me.” He goes back to his blueprint.

“You’re cuter like this, you know,” Jack says, several minutes later. Rhys realizes he hasn’t gone back to the Lazarus Machine; he’s been staring at him. “Even when you’re pissed. Talking about the stuff you’re actually into. Not guns.”

Rhys does not look up at him. He pencils another note onto his blueprint.

——

“I figured out the problem,” Jack says, hours later, when day has stretched into night, but the fluorescent lights are still flickering just the same. Rhys drops his pencil as he snaps back awake.

“Huh?” he says, scrubbing at his ECHOeye. He needs to tinker with its lubrication; it feels sticky.

“With the New-U Station,” Jack says. He’s standing back, now, arms crossed, gazing thoughtfully at the open panel.

“The Lazarus Machine,” Rhys corrects him sleepily, climbing to his feet. He rolls a kink out of his shoulder and winces. _That’s what you get for dozing off on cinderblocks._

Jack continues like he didn’t hear him. “Right here,” he says, sinking onto his heels to jab a translucent finger at the schematics. “There’s a part missing.”

Rhys lowers gingerly back down to his knees by Jack, to squint at the text. Jack’s pointing at a line so tiny it’s nearly illegible, hidden towards the bottom of the densely-printed list of components. Rhys must’ve pored over it a hundred times, but he never caught—

“An Eridium capacitor,” Jack reads, with vindictive triumph, as if at a problem well-solved. Rhys’s stomach sinks; he can’t relate. It feels very much like several _new_ problems, and nothing solved at all.

“I don’t know where to find that,” Rhys says, faintly. He glances around, shuffling the spread-out papers, until he finds the patent diagrams. He scans them over, eyes narrowed with strain, and oh, there it is: a nearly microscopic sub-diagram, crammed subtly into the corner. So small he could cover it with one fingertip. “I don’t even know what it _is_.” Rhys shoves his hand through his hair, blinking down at the blueprint. “Crap.”

“You could make your own,” Jack says, careful and casual all at once. Rhys looks up and meets his gaze. Jack is staring at him, eyebrows raised.

“Based off this— thumbnail?” Rhys asks, exasperated. “ _How?_ ”

“You have access to Eridium,” Jack answers, like it’s obvious. “You have access to _all_ the Eridium.”

“Barely,” Rhys protests. “Almost none of the pumps are working— Headstone would be the best bet, but it’s— and I don’t even know how to _refine_ it—”

Jack interrupts. “I do,” he says.

“You had a lab,” Rhys counters, with an edge of frustration. “Jack, why do you have to make everything sound so _easy_?”

“Because it _is_ ,” Jack insists, straightening up again. “Don’t think industrial-scale. It’s just a chemistry project, right?” His voice is deliberately even, like he’s just barely controlling his eagerness. His fingers twitch. “Like a volcano, for the science fair. Remember those?”

“A volcano,” Rhys repeats.

“Sure.” Jack nods. “All it needs is a precipitant. We used ethanol, back on Helios. Acetone’ll work, in a pinch.” He puts his hands on his hips. “Seriously, kid, one bottle will do it. This doohickey can’t weigh more than a gram.” He taps his toe on the corner of the paper.

Rhys sits back on his heels. He exhales, an overwhelmed, blustery noise, and runs a hand through his hair again. “I mean, maybe?” he says, doubtfully, once he’s let himself consider it. “Sasha wouldn’t know what it was for, if I had to ask. Well, I guess she’d assume I’d started painting my nails—” He shakes his head, and cuts himself off. “But Headstone, Jack. It’s still overrun. I can’t even get _in_ there.”

Jack crosses his arms, and looks down at him. It’s a bad position, with Jack’s legs spread just past shoulder-width; imperious, in a way that feels like a given. Of _course_ he’ll get what he wants. Rhys’s heart beats a little faster as he stares back up at him. “Well,” Jack says, like he already knows how this conversation will end, “then I guess you know what you gotta do.”

Rhys furrows his brow. And then he realizes what Jack means. He gives him a despairing look. “No,” he groans, reluctantly. “Seriously?” He digs the heel of his palm into his sticky eye. “Jack. I don’t... _want_ to.”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Jack says, with a pleasant finality. He claps his hands together. “A deal’s a deal.”

——

Next time he’s in his office— his connection isn’t good enough, at the Dahl bunker, and there’s the paranoia that the location tag will give him away, and lay instantly bare every stupid aspect of this stupid, stupid plan— Rhys reluctantly starts a new letter.

_Dear Athena…_

——

So that’s on hold, for now. The Lazarus Machine. Until they can find— or somehow, impossibly, _make_ — an Eridium capacitor. Rhys collects his coffee maker, and the military rations he still wants to eat. ( _The tortellini didn’t age well_ , he’d decided, discerningly— alone on the bunker’s bed after Jack had gone back into the computer for the night, eating with a plastic spoon from a bag with a zipper on it, like the world’s most pathetic food columnist— but the tortilla soup is still his favorite.) He puts Jack on the thumb drive again, and lugs the whole mess back to his office.

It’s fine. He has a lot on his mind, even without it.

“We got a little more than a month,” Jack says, before that. Before they leave, while they’re still in the room with the servers and the Lazarus Machine, somehow too hot despite the subterranean insulation and the fact that the computers have been powered off for years. Rhys’s shirt sticks to his back. He shifts, uncomfortably.

Jack sits on the other side of the linoleum, across from Rhys, legs stretched out and crossed at the knees. He’s playing catch with his stress ball. Rhys watches it fall, and arc, and fall again, and wonders if it’s brand new, or if Jack somehow managed to materialize the old one.

“Until the Vault opens,” Jack goes on, tossing his ball into the air. “And I guaran-frickin’-tee we are not the only assholes looking to open it. I’d like to be the first.”

“The first assholes?” Rhys asks, absently. He twirls his pencil around his metal thumb in a way that he could never quite master with his bio hand. Then he stops, catching it against his palm, as something finally clicks in his brain. “Wait— is _this_ why you kept asking about the date?” He gives Jack an incredulous look.

Jack concedes, with a tilt of his head. “Guilty.” He doesn’t actually sound guilty.

“Wow,” Rhys says. He considers this. _That long, huh._ “You’re actually kind of insane, you know that?”

“Gotta plan ahead,” says Jack, shrugging. “And my foresight is your gain. For someone who throws around big words like _mutually beneficial_ , you really lay it on like you don’t actually know what they mean.” He throws the ball from one hand to the other. “So stop bitching.”

But Rhys’s mind is wandering, away from Jack’s words. “What was it like?” he asks, hesitantly. “Inside yours? Your vaults, I mean.”

“Mostly crappy,” Jack says, casually. “Lava. Mean ladies. Whole lotta stuff that wanted to kill me.” He snatches the ball out of the air. “Yours?”

“Big,” Rhys says, after he thinks about it. “And empty.” _Mostly._ He laughs, humorlessly, and lets his head fall back against the wall. “Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

He knows why. Of course he does. It’s just that out loud, it sounds comically fruitless.

“For the potential,” Jack says, seriously. And then he leans forward, eyes bright, and Rhys sits up a little straighter. Whatever reassurance, whatever sweetener Jack is about to offer— he wants to hear it. “But you know what this one is called?” Jack says, with the decadent indulgence of icing a cake. “ _The Vault of the Dreamer._ ” He grins, conspiratorial. “I’ve heard it can grant freakin’ _wishes_.”

 _Vaults can’t grant wishes_. Rhys knows this, but he can’t say it. He can’t scoff, or roll his eyes. All he can do is stare, wide-eyed, penetrated like a deer by headlights in the half-second before impact. “A month,” he says, finally, through his dry mouth.

“A month,” Jack confirms. “And change.”

So the timeline is tight. With the Vault. And with the Lazarus Machine, because the Vault won’t happen without Jack cooperating. With Maliwan, if they ever get back to him.

Rhys is aware of that. It doesn’t change the work he has to do. He plugs the coffee machine back where it belongs, while Jack gets settled on his old computer.

“Good to be back?” Rhys asks, when he materializes. really settling in; there’s a flatscreen, now, in a little hollow of cleared junk on the coffee table. “Just like you left it?”

“Home sweet home,” Jack says, already settled on the leather sofa. Rhys nods. _Nothing wrong with the transfer, then._ He meanders over— and then stops, in the middle of the marble floor.

“Hey!” he says. “You’re wearing my shirt!” He plants his hands on his hips, and grins. “Wuh-huh-how, I never thought I’d see the day. Handsome Jack in Atlas colors.”

“Yeah, yeah. Yuk it up.” Jack doesn’t look up from his laptop screen. “This make me your first customer?”

“Well,” Rhys says, reasonably, “You didn’t actually pay.” He walks over to where Jack is sitting, and leans against the arm of the sofa. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it out of your first paycheck.”

“Like hell you will,” Jack scoffs, with a particularly violent keystroke. “And don’t count those chickens just yet, sweetheart. Keep your head on straight. What’s the prototype situation?”

“I talked to Sasha yesterday,” Rhys says. “She said it’s just finishing touches, now. The cryo goo doesn’t do that thing where it backs up and sprays the user in the face anymore, so we’re basically good to go.”

Jack hums. “Still gotta wait for Maliwan to get back to you. You ready? Know what you’re gonna say?”

“Yeah, actually,” Rhys says. “I’ve done my homework. Maliwan’s turnaround, their workflow, price points. The whole shebang.” For once, he’s prepared, and he’s pleased about it. “I have a pitch planned, too. Super crisp. The guys at Maliwan love that stuff.”

“Yeah?” The skeptical trail of his voice makes Rhys frown. “If you say so.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Rhys asks, defensive. “You think I can’t do it?”

“I’m just saying,” Jack says, spreading his hands diplomatically, “you’re cute, Rhysie, but I wouldn’t peg you for a public speaking kinda guy.” He holds up one finger. “However— your hair looks nice today.”

Rhys feels his expression go sour. “Don’t— _compliment sandwich_ me, Jack. You didn’t even do it right.” He circles the couch, so he’s facing Jack head on. “I _nailed_ pretending to be Vasquez. You think I can’t perform when it matters?” He crosses his arms. “This is my company, Jack. I know it from the inside out.” Rhys’s metal hand makes a fist in his sleeve. “I’m _not_ gonna fuck this up.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “I know you won’t, babe,” he says, appeasingly. “I trust you, okay?”

“Sure you do,” Rhys mutters. He drops his arms. “Well, now you’re in my head about it. Thanks a lot. You want to hear it, then?”

Jack smiles at him. It feels patronizing. “Oh, by all means.”

“Fine,” Rhys says, stiffly. He clears his throat. Jack folds his arms over his chest, eyebrows raised, making a show of paying attention.

Rhys takes a deep breath. And then he clasps his hands tight at the small of his back, like he’s practiced, and begins to walk in a methodical, pacing oval.

“Hyperion,” he begins. His voice carries, loud and clear and confident. Jack’s eyebrows raise. “Revolutionary. Transformative. A force of nature.” His gaze flicks to every shareholder at the imaginary conference room table. It helps, not staring straight at him. “And a pain in everyone's ass.”

He waits a beat, holding his breath at his own daring, before he goes on. “It was a company _flush_ with pricks, captained by the most obnoxious prick of them all.” He spreads his arms. “Fortunately— for _all_ of us— both Hyperion and its leader are pushing daisies in some craphole salt flat on Pandora. Sure, the crash of Helios crippled the galactic economy, killed thousands, and disrupted the universe’s supply of Eridium. But it reminded us of something important.” He comes to a standstill, right in the middle of his stage. “ _Stability_. Before Hyperion’s rise and fall— back when Handsome Jack was just plain old _Jack_ — there was another household name.”

Jack watches him, in a way that makes Rhys feel like he’s riding a roller coaster with no brakes.

“Atlas,” Rhys says, with relish. He ignores the way Jack’s gaze makes his heart race. “Just a blip, in terms of stock prices. Barely relevant in this corner of the galaxy. Why, their absorption by Hyperion might just be the most well-known thing they ever accomplished.” He spreads his hands wide in front of him. “And yet— where others fell— it stands again. From the ashes of Hyperion's gutted corpse, Atlas has been reborn anew.”

Rhys takes a deep breath, and drops his arms back to his sides. He faces his audience with a winning smile. “We present an opportunity for something Hyperion could never accomplish. Something _no one_ has ever accomplished.” He pauses, for effect. “Stability on Pandora. Ladies, gentlemen, colleagues,” he concludes, folding his hands back behind him, “Atlas can do it right. Atlas... can do it _better_.”

Silence.

Giving the speech to himself as he lay in bed, on the edge of sleep, Rhys always imagined it’d be followed by applause. That seems rather silly now, he realizes, staring at Jack’s cold expression. His heart stutters. By degrees, the triumphant grin fades awkwardly from his face.

“So, uh,” he says, through the tension, rubbing the back of his head, “what did you think?”

“Cute,” Jack says. “Real cute.”

Rhys swallows. He crosses his arms, protectively, and waits for the rest. For Jack to draw a gun and shoot his computer-body dead through the heart. For Jack to fire _him_ , somehow.

But Jack just goes back to his laptop, face stiff with forced disinterest. “Sounds great. I bet you’ll knock ‘em dead.”

Rhys exhales, fingers going loose on his arms. “Wait, you’re not— gonna yell at me?”

Jack keeps his eyes on his screen. “I’m not mad,” he lies. “I loved it. You do what you gotta do, pumpkin. It’s your company, after all.”

Rhys bites the inside of his cheek.

This was a stupid idea. The speech is good, he knows that. But sharing it with Jack… _too cocky_. Overplayed.

“I was just saying all of that,” Rhys says, weakly, after a moment. “You know. To get them interested.”

“Uh-huh.” Jack’s back to his rapid-fire typing.

“My— my product’s only half-baked,” Rhys insists. “It doesn’t hold a _candle_ to the original Storm.”

Jack looks up long enough to give him a brief, dirty look. “Really, Rhys? Come on. Sucking up?”

“Well, yeah,” Rhys says, frowning. “Because you look like a kicked dog.”

“No I don’t,” Jack says, mulishly. “And I’ve kicked way more dogs than you, so I would know.” His mouth twists, and he mutters, “At least the way you’d tell it.”

“Jack, come on,” Rhys says, taking a tentative step closer. “Stop sulking. I’m being honest. I don’t know shit about guns, and even I get a little hard for the design.”

“Yeah, well,” says Jack, still sulking. “It’s friggin’ sexy. Everyone did.”

Rhys sighs through his nose, pursing his lips. An idea crosses his mind, and before he can really think it through, he’s walking forward, closing the distance between them, to grab Jack’s laptop with both hands. He tosses it to the other end of the couch.

“Excuse you, I was using that—”

“I think you can tear yourself away,” Rhys says, climbing into Jack’s lap, “for two seconds.”

The squinting irritation in Jack’s eyes flickers into apprehension. His palms go instinctively to Rhys’s sides.

“Fine,” he says, with a stubborn edge. “I’m listening.”

Rhys sits back, letting his weight settle on his heels. His knees press into the couch on either side of Jack’s thighs. It’s meant to be disarming, but he knows, warily, in the back of his mind, that his _disarming_ moves always end up leaving him defenseless, too. _That’s what makes it a gambit,_ Rhys supposes. He clears his throat. “Are you sure,” he begins carefully, and he can tell by the way Jack’s brow furrows that a conversation isn’t what he expected, “you don’t just want to remake Hyperion?”

Jack’s fingers curl defensively. “What is this?” he asks. “Some kind of test? You gonna wipe my hard drive if I answer wrong?”

“No,” Rhys says. “I just want to know. It’s not in writing, yet— your stake in Atlas. You can still take it back.”

“And why would I do that?” Jack’s voice is even.

“Because you don’t want me telling you what to do,” Rhys answers. “Because you can’t stand me being your boss. Because you _hate_ this. Because it’s pretty likely you’ll try and have me killed the second you’re out and walking around, and if I cut you loose _now_ , maybe I could save us both the trouble.”

Jack tongues the inside of his lip. “What’re you saying, cupcake?” he says, slowly. “You want Jack off your team?”

“I’m not saying that,” Rhys says, honestly. Because no one sane would choose to play against Handsome Jack— not when they could pick him for their own side, first. “But I feel like you’re only betting on my horse because you don’t have one of your own.” Rhys swallows when Jack starts rubbing thoughtful circles into his hips. He forces down a shiver. “Like last time.”

Rhys appreciates, at least, that Jack takes a long moment to consider what he’s saying, fingers still moving, slow and steady. Finally, he answers. “I’m not saying you’re cut out for this, Rhys. ‘Cause you’re not.” He meets his gaze, and this time, Rhys can’t help the little chill that skitters down the back of his neck. “But I’m not about to sit here and let you run baby’s first company into the ground. Not with my name attached to it.” He tilts his head, and faintly smirks. “Y’know, in a personal sense. I understand my business role here is more _shadow investor_.”

Rhys shifts uncomfortably on his lap. “Then—”

“I get what you’re asking,” Jack cuts him off, grip hardening on Rhys’s hips, making his next breath stick in his throat. “You’re asking if I’m really cool with playing second fiddle.” He cants his head back, lifting his chin to look at Rhys down the length of his nose, appraisingly. His voice darkens. “No. I’m not. And that’s why,” he says, leaning forward, “I’m running this thing right along with you.” This close, Rhys can see the little flecks of gold in his green eye. “You know. Like _last time_. But for real.”

Rhys breathes out. His eyes twitch between Jack’s, searching for the lie.

“Cross my heart,” Jack says, sitting back. The shadow in his voice disperses. It’s nearly enough to break the spell; to bring things back to normal. “Hey. I’m wearing your colors, aren’t I?”

Rhys lifts his hand, as if through water. He hooks his metal finger in the collar of Jack’s shirt. “Yeah,” he says, slowly. “I guess you are.”

“There you go,” Jack says, like a conclusion. “Mutual—” But Rhys makes a sudden, hard fist in the fabric, and cuts him off.

“But let me make one thing perfectly clear, Jack.” Rhys leans closer, until he can feel his own breath against Jack’s mouth, and murmurs, eyes downcast, “If we’re doing this? If I let you out of your little lamp, and you take my altruism for granted?” His gaze flicks up, to meet Jack’s. “I’ll kill you. I’ll slit your throat, right where you stand. And this time, I won’t feel bad about it.”

There’s a handful of heartbeats. And then Jack grins, with teeth. “Jeez, pumpkin,” he says. His voice is thick and low, like a purr. “You’re kinda sexy when you’re making threats.”

Rhys leans back, and releases Jack’s shirt. He smooths down the wrinkles over his chest. “I’m not kidding,” he says, honestly. “You lost to me once. I guarantee you’ll lose to me again.”

“I know,” Jack says. “I got it. I’ll be good.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Rhys gives him a dry look. “You’re staying on a short leash.”

“Oh, even sexier.” Jack rolls his shoulders back, chest going broader under Rhys’s palm. His gaze takes a long, thoughtful trip down Rhys’s front, and then back up. “So,” he says, after a moment, letting it linger. “You climb all the way up here just to threaten me?”

Rhys exhales. He feels the pupil of his ECHOeye dilate, to match the other one. “Maybe,” he says, softly. “What if I did?”

“Then you’d be a tease,” Jack answers, letting his thumbs brush against Rhys’s waist, “and a liar. Don’t tell me the logo isn’t doing it for you.”

Rhys looks down at the _Atlas_ splayed across Jack’s front. “Silver _is_ objectively classier than gold,” he admits, tracing the red text’s outline with his fingertip.

Jack hums, tapping a knuckle up against the chrome bicep by his hand. “You're just saying that because you upgraded.”

“No,” Rhys says, “it's true. I don't make the rules.” He leans back, steadying himself with his flesh hand on one of Jack’s knees. The shift in balance is calculated; it puts him squarely on Jack’s hips.

“Sure you do, babe.” Jack grunts when Rhys snugs against him. “That's your job now.”

Rhys’s head tilts back, and like it’s a signal, a green light he’s been waiting for, Jack’s grip goes vice-tight above his thighs. He pulls him down into a grind, and Rhys feels Jack’s own hips cant upwards to meet him. Rhys’s mouth falls open, panting, and Jack makes a satisfied noise. “That's the ticket,” he mutters, and leans forward to press his lips to Rhys’s exposed throat.

_Knock, knock._

Rhys bolts upright. He stares wildly up at the ceiling, ears straining.

“What?” Jack says, distractedly, chasing Rhys’s skin with his mouth.

Rhys shoves him back against the couch, and hisses, “Did you hear that?”

_Knock, knock, knock._

“ _Fuck_ ,” Rhys says, and yanks the wire out of his head.

“Oh, you gotta be _kidding_ me, cupca—”

Rhys lurches forward from his computer chair, and jerks out the cord that powers Jack’s projector. He takes a scant few seconds to readjust his pants— _I swear to god, if this is just a guy selling encyclopedias_ — and grab his shotgun from its place beside the door.

He takes a deep breath, and opens it.

“Hey,” Sasha says, wide-eyed. She looks from the gun, to the rest of him, and finally back up to his face. “Uh… am I interrupting?” She raises her eyebrows.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s just you.” His heart has stopped and started way too many times today. He laughs, and the bubbling anxiety in it has her giving him a funny look. “No. Haha. Jeez, sorry.” He lowers the gun. “It’s fine. Come in.”

Sasha picks her way through the garbage, and only makes one cursory comment about the thick layer of dust on his filing cabinet. Rhys fixes her a cup of coffee, as she sits carefully on the edge of the computer chair, like she doesn’t quite trust it.

The monitor is still on. Rhys stares wide-eyed over her shoulder at the display; at the tab blinking angrily on the taskbar. Desperately, he considers pretending to trip and falling directly on the power button, but— no, shit, she’s already noticed he’s staring. He shoves the coffee abruptly into her hands and sits across from her, so she has to turn and face him.

“So how are things?” he asks, slightly higher-pitched than he would like. “Any cool new scars?”

“Nope. But I found your guy,” she says, far more conversationally than him, one hand wrapped around her mug. She doesn’t seem to notice Rhys’s poorly-disguised terror, but given his display at the door, it probably seems par for the course. _No wonder they’re worried about you._ “Timothy Lawrence? He was weird.” She pulls a small paper packet out of her jacket. “I got pictures.”

“Weird how?” Rhys asks, as steady and neutral as he can. He keeps his gaze trained on her face as he takes them.

Sasha makes an _I dunno_ noise, and shrugs. “He just gave me a weird vibe! Wore a creepy bandit mask, and wouldn’t take it off.” She takes a polite sip. “And he did _not_ want to talk.”

“Oh,” Rhys says. He opens the packet.

“He’s in Sun’s Cradle, if _you_ wanna give it a shot. I would’ve hog-tied him for you, but you didn’t ask.” She pushes herself back and forth on the wheels of the chair. Rhys can’t quite tell if she’s being serious or not.

“No,” Rhys says, nibbling thoughtfully on his lip as he thumbs through the photos. “This’ll work.” They look like the work of a private detective with a Polaroid. Timothy has clearly spotted her, in the last one, and even through the odd mask Rhys can see his unease. “I’ll go talk to him. Thanks, Sasha.”

“You’re welcome,” Sasha says. “And listen, we’re square now, right? Because Fiona and me have _stuff_ that needs doing.”

“Yeah,” says Rhys. He puts the pictures down in his lap. “We’re square. Go follow your treasure map.”

Sasha winks at him. “You know it.”

She stays long enough to finish half her coffee. Rhys lets her wrap him in a hug before she leaves, and feels only a little guilty returning it.

The moment the door is closed, he trips over a stack of manila folders to get back to Jack’s computer, sending them scattering.

 **> that wasn’t very nice of you, princess.**  
**> you’re making it up to me.**  
**> for real, this time.**  
**> i’m sorry i’m sorry**  
**> sasha showed up**  
**> she found timothy!!**  
**> i’m coming back in**

Rhys scans the photos with his ECHOeye, and slots in the protective dummy jack before he connects. His excitement makes the trip feel like forever— but it gutters slightly into apprehension when he finally arrives, and Jack’s standing right there, arms crossed, foot tapping impatiently.

He claps a heavy hand on Rhys’s shoulder, as soon as he’s solid. It makes Rhys jump. “We really need to work on your manners, kiddo.”

“It was Sasha,” Rhys protests, shrugging at Jack’s hand. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Make her wait her turn,” Jack explains, patiently. He squeezes before letting go. “Now. Tell me what you got on Timmy.”

Rhys pulls up the photos. “It’s not much,” he admits. “I don’t even know what he looks.”

Jack moves to Rhys’s side, and leans in to squint at the images as Rhys flips through them. “Yeah,” he says, confidently. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“For real?” Rhys looks at him sideways, eyebrows raised. “How can you tell?”

“I spent a lot of time with the kid,” Jack says, straightening. “Got a handle on his vibe. So, what, she just let him go?”

“I mean, yeah,” Rhys says, frowning. “I didn’t ask Sasha to kidnap someone for me.” He continues before Jack can argue that point. “But I’m gonna go talk to him myself.”

“All right.” Jack nods, satisfied with that answer. “Good. That’s the initiative I like to see. And seriously, just grab the guy, he’s used to it. It’s in his contract, anyway. Technically, he’s gotta do whatever you say.”

“Um,” Rhys says, brow furrowing. “What kind of… _employee_ was he, exactly?”

“Independent contractor,” Jack says. When Rhys still looks doubtful, Jack rolls his eyes, and elaborates. “That means _Vault hunter_. And not the insufferable kind. I actually kept him around for a while, afterwards.”

“Oh,” Rhys says. “Okay.” Somehow, that isn’t what he expected. He glances down at the photos again, before curling his fingers shut against his palm.

“Well!” Jack says, clapping his hands together. “I guess you better get going, then, huh?”

“Um.” Rhys glances to the side, and clears his throat. “Right now? I thought you, uh.” He mumbles the rest of his sentence. “Wanted me to make things up to you.”

Jack looks at him, gaze a little dark. He takes Rhys’s jaw in his hand, and skims his thumb across his mouth.

Rhys’s lips part. Jack’s eyes catch on how they move.

“Yeah,” he says, with a gruff edge to his voice. “I do.” He drops his hand. “But you’re gonna have to catch him before he skips town.” He turns back to the couch. “Make hay while the sun is high.”

Rhys swallows. “Right,” he says. “Next time, then. After I bring him back.”

“You better,” Jack says, sing-song, and sits back down. Rhys takes that as his cue to unplug. “And just so you know,” Jack adds, as Rhys’s hand goes to the connection in his head, “I’m charging interest. We’re talking a blowjob at the very least.”

He winks as Rhys turns into code, and probably— hopefully— doesn’t see what that does to his face.

——

“I don’t know much about him,” Vaughn says, hushed and quick, as he leads Rhys through the darkened streets of Sun’s Cradle, “but I know Sasha really freaked him out. I had to convince him not to leave, like, immediately. You sure you need to talk to him, dude?”

“It’s important,” Rhys says. “Stuff about his contract. I’m not gonna hurt him.”

“Okay,” Vaughn says. They stop in front of a seedy bar; seedier, even, than Vaughn’s favorite. “He’s in here.” He smiles. Rhys tries to smile back, through the nerves. He takes a moment to straighten his shirt before he walks inside. Vaughn gives him a thumbs up. “Lookin’ good.”

“Thanks,” Rhys says, and goes in alone.

It’s dimly lit, but Timothy’s hard to miss. He’s alone, huddled into a corner, clutching a dirty glass in both hands. And he’s wearing a bandit mask, pushed up just enough to show his jaw, and allow him to take a nervous sip.

“Hello,” Rhys says, pleasantly, sliding into the booth across from him. “This seat taken?”

He goes stiff immediately. “Um, who’s asking?” he replies, defensive, putting down his liquor to yank the mask down all the way. He’s wearing a single leather glove. _Surprisingly high quality,_ Rhys observes, appraisingly. His nails are dirty. “I mean, no, but, uh— why? You—” Belatedly, his voice adopts a surly timbre through the plaster. “You need something?”

“A place to sit,” Rhys says, leaning on the grimy table with his elbow. “And a drink.” He glances over, and waves at the bartender.

“What can I— oh!” She straightens up. “It’s you! What’ll you have? It’s on the house.”

“Haha,” Rhys answers, face coloring a little. He glances between the bartender and Timothy, and cups the back of his neck sheepishly. “Um, water is fine.”

“Coming right up,” she chirps, and winks at him.

“Oh, no.” There’s a strangled groan from behind the mask. The man— Timothy— grips the edge of the battered table, fingers splayed. “You’re— oh, _absolutely_ not. No way.”

Rhys looks back at him, distracted. “Uh, pardon?”

“I know who you are,” says Timothy Lawrence, with conviction, “and I do not need your— your _energy_ , right now.”

“My energy?” Rhys echoes. Tim braces his palms on the table and stands, abruptly, to beeline for the door. “Whoa— wait, where are you going?” Rhys fumbles in his pocket, slaps down a few bills, and hustles to follow.

“Somewhere else. I’ll move.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Look— I've had enough wacky hijinks for a _lifetime_. Okay? I'm perfectly happy to, to, to just, chill out and do nothing!” Timothy spins around and jabs a finger into his chest, agitation muffled behind the mask hiding his face. “ _You_ are the hijinks guy.”

“The—”

“I mean, thanks, for, y'know, your _service_ , and killing _Jack_ , and all that jazz, but I'm not going vault hunting, I’m not investing in your pyramid scheme, and I am _not_ starring in your porno. Not again!”

He’s practically jogging away, now, and he’s _fast_. Rhys decides he doesn’t much like the odds if he has to chase him down. “Hey— I’m just trying to talk to you! Would you stop—” Rhys remembers, suddenly, what Jack said; he grabs Timothy by the elbow.

Timothy turns, yanking his arm away, and even through the mask he looks horribly affronted. “Seriously, man? You’re just gonna _grab_ me?”

Rhys lets go like he got burned, stepping backwards. “Dude— what is your _problem_?”

“Right now?” Timothy says, voice going higher. “You are!” He steps backwards until he’s out of Rhys’s armspan, and holds up his hands. “I’m just trying to get by, okay? I got— I got bills to pay. You’d think a workplace explosion would get the student loan board off your ass, but it doesn’t.” He sighs, heavily. His broad shoulders sag. “Look, I’m sorry for being, like, _rude_ , okay? I’m a little jumpy. It’s not my fault.”

Rhys shakes his head, trying to clear out the high-strung _clutter_ that is Timothy Lawrence. “Okay? Look, I’m not trying to… _do_ anything to you, man. I just have a business proposition. Which should sound good to you, if you owe money?” He crosses his arms.

Timothy manages to look miserable even with a mask over his face. “Fine,” he groans. “What is it? Just tell me.”

“I found your contract,” Rhys fibs, straightening his shirt again, with what little dignity this conversation has left him. “You were important to Hyperion. And… the people in charge of Hyperion. That contract’s pretty ironclad.”

“Oh my god,” says Timothy Lawrence, faintly, rocking back on his heels. “This is not my day.” Rhys doubts that _any_ day has been his day, based on the way he approaches the world. “And, what— you’re remaking Hyperion?”

Oh, so that’s the misunderstanding. Rhys laughs, relieved. “No,” he says. “Jeez, no. I’m remaking _Atlas._ ”

But this doesn’t appear to reassure Timothy in the least. “Fantastic,” he mutters. “Because that’s better.” He shakes his head, and adds, I know someone who won’t be too happy about that, y’know.”

Rhys frowns. “Who?”

“Uh,” Timothy says, going even tenser. “Never mind. You wouldn’t know her.”

“Look,” Rhys says, reasonably, trying to get the conversation back on track. “You can’t hate Hyperion _that_ much. You live here!”

Timothy is silent, for a second. Then, finally: “They’re sympathetic,” he says, quietly. “At least, they don’t shoot on sight.”

Rhys stares at him, uncomprehending. The frustration of this conversation is quickly reaching a breaking point. “Okay, dude—” Rhys runs a hand through his hair. “What are you _talking_ about? You were a _Vault_ hunter.” He makes a noise between a laugh and a scoff. “Why would anyone hate— I mean, besides Handsome— hey!”

This time, Timothy grabs _him._ He yanks Rhys into a low-light alley, littered with cigarette butts and shattered brown-glass bottles. Rhys follows him around the corner of a dumpster, until they’re obscured from the view of the street. “Are you _stupid_?” Timothy is hissing. “Why are you here, if you don’t even know—”

And now, belatedly— too late, with slow-motion horror— Rhys realizes he might’ve come armed with bad information.

Because Timothy hooks his thumbs under the jawline of his mask, and shoves it up into his hair. Rhys sees his mouth, and sees his nose, and Timothy could’ve stopped there— could’ve stopped before the mismatched eyes and the attractively-arched eyebrows, and the sweat-limp, swooping waves of hair atop his head. Before the one, distinguished streak of grey, right at the temple.

Rhys steps back like he got punched in the chest. The hair prickles on the back of his neck.

_Oh._

“I’m sorry,” Rhys says, when he finds his voice again. “I don’t— this isn’t the right job for you.” He swallows, twice, willing horror and bile back down his throat. “You can just— pretend this never happened.”

Timothy doesn’t seem to believe him. He’s still tensed, like a cornered animal. It makes sense, now; his apprehension. This _task_. All of it. Rhys has to look briefly at the metal alley wall, at its chipped yellow paint.

“You know there was only a year left? On my contract.” Timothy says, bitterly. He yanks the mask back down. Rhys is so grateful it nearly makes his knees buckle. “I almost got out.”

“You did,” Rhys says. He can’t quite force himself to breath, yet. He needs to be alone. “It’s fine. I’ll destroy it.”

“Great,” Timothy says, slowly. Like he doesn’t quite believe it, but he wants to. Like a man who’s spent his whole life wishing he could believe the things he’s told. He takes a cautious step back, all the same. “That would be cool.”

“Just _go_ ,” Rhys says, with force. “This didn’t happen.”

Timothy doesn’t have to be told twice.

Somehow, Rhys’s legs carry him back to the gates of Sun’s Cradle without getting lost. He doesn’t stop to say goodbye to Vaughn; he just counts the pounding, angry beats of his heart, and tries to calm down.

It doesn’t work. He stares out at humid night on the rocky Pandoran landscape, thick with darkness, and takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna kill him,” he says, simply, and teleports home.

——

Jack is in the office when Rhys returns.

“Hey, kiddo!” He says, happily. He cranes past Rhys, to try and look behind him. “Any luck? Yo, Timmy! You out there?”

Rhys takes off his coat, and hangs it up. “He’s not here,” he answers, calm and terse.

Jack sags. “Ah, shit. That squirrelly little bastard. I knew he’d make a run for it.” He rubs at his jaw, looking frustrated. Not angry. Not at Rhys. _Not yet._ “You get a bead on where he went?”

“Oh, no,” Rhys says, unbuttoning the cuffs of his dress shirt. He rolls his sleeves up to his elbows. “I met him.”

Jack stops, a few feet behind him. “Did ya now,” he says, slowly. He puts his hands on his hips. _Finally_ , Rhys thinks, _he’s learned to read the air._ “What’s the story, Rhysie?”

“I let him go,” says Rhys. He looks at Jack. “And I want you to shred his contract.”

There’s a beat before Jack’s face twists into incredulity. “Why the hell would I do that?” He laughs, one of his slow-building, frustrated laughs. “Rhys, kiddo, do you— how do you not see how _perfect_ this is?”

“That wasn’t a request.” Rhys steps closer. “Delete his contract, or I’ll crack you open and do it myself.” A sliver of betrayal bleeds into the deliberate calm of his voice. He stops, shifting his weight back on his heels. “Jack, why didn’t you tell me?”

Jack narrows his eyes. “Tell you what?” He puts his hands on his hips, like he’s ready for a confrontation. “That I had the perfect solution to our little _find Jack a body_ problem?”

“How delusional,” Rhys hisses, shoulders squaring, fists clenching, “do you have to be? To think that— if I'm uncomfortable testing the tech on a fucking _skag_ , I'd totally be chill with you overwriting one of your _body doubles?_ ”

Jack raises his eyebrows. He looks honest-to-god baffled by Rhys’s outrage. “What is the _issue_ here, pumpkin?” he asks, half-laughing in his irritation. “It's just _Tim_. Like, what, he was living such a great life when you found him? He'd probably be gagging for it, the little sicko.”

And that’s it; that’s enough. Rhys walks straight through Jack’s projection, and grabs the neural cord.

They’re having this conversation in person.

But Jack just goes on, turning. The anger in his voice builds, like floodwater. “‘Cause it's so different from using me, right? Perfect little Rhysie, _his_ actions are totally justifiable, not like _big bad Handsome—_ ”

Rhys jams the uplink into his brain. He materializes with a bang, like gunfire. Jack comes with him.

“Shut _up_ , Jack!” Rhys yells, fists raised in frustration that’s quickly losing its impotence. Jack’s words— his attitude— are seeping in; the levies of Rhys’s self-control begin to buckle.

But Jack is still talking, and he’s in Rhys’s face immediately, fury coming to a boil behind his eyes. “Happy to use _my_ brain, right, sweetheart? Keep me locked up for your entertainment, popping in whenever you need something? That's _not the same_. You're a _good_ guy.”

Rhys plants his hands on Jack’s chest, and shoves. “Stop talking,” he hisses, through his teeth. “ _Burn_ his _contract_.”

Jack gives up no ground. He doesn't even flinch. “Make me.”

So Rhys cups Jack’s face. It would almost be a tender gesture, if it weren’t for the force with which his hand connects, and the fact that he’s trying to jailbreak into Jack’s complex code against his will. His forehead wrinkles in concentration, thumb digging into the lifelike flesh of the mask, just below his cheekbone.

Jack laughs. And then he grabs Rhys, hard. He plants his hands on both sides of his head, and wrenches it backwards with a strength that makes Rhys’s neck muscles flare with pain, like whiplash. Jack’s fingers probe straight for the neural port. The golden tendril, connecting Rhys to the real world, flickers.

It’s just a tickle, licking through his brain. But Rhys's eyes go wide, gaze immediately losing focus. His teeth click shut. He realizes something very, very important. As if he’s still sitting up in wetspace, in the body that he knows, dimly, is beginning to violently seize— he sees it, sitting right there on the desk.

He forgot the dummy jack. His connection is raw.

Jack is faster. Much, much faster. He’s a program, after all; Rhys is only human. His knees start to buckle, and he crushes his eyes shut.

“No,” he gasps, around the waves of nausea rocking up his stomach, through the growing fog of disorientation. He feels his real body bite its tongue. He tastes the blood. “Stop—”

The tickle builds to a buzz— to hot, frothing static, reverberation, a drilling, angry swarm— concentrated in a tight circle around the port, like an icepick headache, waves of sound and agony bouncing off the surface of his skull and amplifying, louder and louder, worse and worse until Rhys is going to die, his head is going to explode, the pain is too much, the noise— and this was one mistake too many, and this time, Jack will win.

Jack makes a furious, feral sound. His grip tightens, like he wants to pop Rhys’s head himself, with his own two hands. And then he’s shoving him away, so hard that Rhys falls backwards, and the back of his skull hits the floor with a sickening thud.

As soon as Jack’s fingers leave the port, the buzzing calms. All that remains is the echo, of the sound and of the pain, like tinnitus he can feel across his skin, like pins and needles he can hear.

“Get out,” Jack says, as Rhys struggles to sit up on his elbows. “Now.” And even through the haze, though he can barely comprehend beyond the ringing in his ears, it’s the angriest Rhys has ever heard him.

Rhys doesn’t argue. He raises his hand with all the strength he has left, and yanks out the connection.

His hands shake when he unplugs the projector. He leaves a smear of blood on the cord, from where his nails have carved half-moon cuts into his clenching palms.

The hot wind of Pandora hits his face the moment he wrenches open the door. He stumbles into the junkyard that surrounds his home, and falls to his knees beside a hunk of metal, and throws up.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, what a wait... thank you all for your patience! i hope you enjoy!! <3


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